Plastidic phosphoglucomutase genes

ABSTRACT

An isolated nucleic acid fragment encoding a plastidic phosphoglucomutase protein is disclosed. Also disclosed is the construction of a chimeric gene encoding all or a substantial portion of the plastidic phosphoglucomutase, in sense or antisense orientation, wherein expression of the chimeric gene results in production of altered levels of the plastidic phosphoglucomutase in a transformed host cell.

This application is a Continuation-in-Part and claims the benefit of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/906,209, filed Jul. 16, 2001, now pending, and U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/218,712, filed Jul. 17, 2000, now expired, the entire contents of both are herein incorporated by reference.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention is in the field of plant molecular biology. More specifically, this invention pertains to isolated nucleic acid fragments encoding plastidic phosphoglucomutase proteins in plants and seeds and the use of such fragments to modulate expression of a gene encoding plastidic phosphoglucomutase activity.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Starch synthesis occurs in the chloroplast while soluble carbohydrate (i.e., sucrose) synthesis occurs in the cytosol. These biosynthetic pathways are competing processes because excess triose phosphate can be used for either starch synthesis in the chloroplast or sucrose synthesis in the cytosol. These pathways have many common steps, however, the enzymes that catalyze similar steps are unique to each compartment. These enzymes are isozymes; different forms of the enzymes that catalyze the same reaction. For example, the plastidic and cytosolic forms of phosphoglucomutase both catalyze the conversion of glucose-6-phosphate to glucose 1-phosphate in different subcellular locations.

At maturity, about 40% of soybean seed dry weight is protein and 20% extractable oil. These constitute the economically valuable products of the soybean crop. Of the remaining 40% of seed weight, about 10% is soluble carbohydrate. The soluble carbohydrate portion contributes little to the economic value of soybean seeds and the main component of the soluble carbohydrate fraction, raffinosaccharides, are deleterious both to processing and to the food value of soybean meal in monogastric animals (Coon et al., (1988) Proceedings Soybean Utilization Alternatives, Univ. of Minnesota, pp. 203-211).

It may be possible to modulate the size of the starch and soluble carbohydrate pools in plant cells by altering the catalytic activity of specific enzymes in the starch and soluble carbohydrate biosynthetic pathways, such as phosphoglucomutase or one or both of the large and small subunits of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase (Taiz L., et al. Plant Physiology; The Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company: New York, 1991). For example, during soybean seed maturation a large portion of the glucose which is converted to soluble carbohydrates (sucrose, raffinose and stachyose) during soybean seed maturation comes from the break down of a starch pool which was produced slowly during the primary growth phase. Elimination of this transient starch pool may be a strategy for diverting carbon away from the soluble carbohydrate components of dry soybean seeds (sucrose, raffinose and stachyose) and into the more economically desirable components such as oil and protein. This strategy may also be applicable to other plants such as corn, rice and wheat. Elimination of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase expression in developing maize embryos may decrease the production of transient starch in that tissue and lead to a concomitant increase in the oil content of the embryo [Singletary, G et al. (2001) U.S. Pat. No. 6,232,529].

There is a great deal of interest in identifying the genes that encode proteins involved in starch and soluble carbohydrate biosynthesis in plants. The genes that code for these enzymes may be used to study the interactions among individuals of the pathways and develop methods to alter starch and soluble carbohydrate biosynthesis. Accordingly, the availability of nucleic acid sequences encoding all or a substantial portion of a plastidic or cytosolic phosphoglucomutase (PGM) enzyme would facilitate studies to better understand starch and soluble carbohydrate biosynthesis in plants and provide genetic tools to enhance or otherwise alter starch and soluble carbohydrate biosynthesis.

Previous reports on a plastidic PGM mutant (pgm-1) from the oilseed plant Arabidopsis (Caspar et al. (1985) Plant Physiol. 79:11-17; Periappuram et al., (2000) Plant Physiol. 122:1193-1199) indicated that pgm-1 mutant plants showed a decrease in seed lipid content and an increase in leaf soluble carbohydrates. High levels of soluble carbohydrates were also observed in starchless Nicotiana sylvestris plants deficient in the plastidic PGM activity (Huber and Hanson, (1992) Plant Physiol. 99:1449-1454). Yet another effect of reduced starch content on carbon partitioning was observed in pea (Pisum sativum). Seeds from wild type pea typically contain 60% of the seed dry weight as starch. The rug3 locus of Pisum sativum encodes the pea plastidic phosphoglucomutase. Pea seeds, of the rug3rug3 genotype, substantially lacking plastidic phosphoglucomutase activity, have a wrinkled phenotype, higher levels of sucrose and an increased lipid content at maturity (EP 1001029A1; Casey et al., (1998) J. Plant Physiol. 152: 636-640).

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In a first embodiment, the present invention concerns an isolated polynucleotide comprising: (a) a first nucleotide sequence encoding a first polypeptide comprising at least 560 amino acids, wherein the amino acid sequence of the first polypeptide and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:8 have at least 95%, 96%, 97%, 98%, 99% or 100% sequence identity, based on the Clustal V method of alignment, (b) a second nucleotide sequence encoding a second polypeptide comprising at least 560 amino acids, wherein the amino acid sequence of the second polypeptide and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2, SEQ ID NO:4, or SEQ ID NO:10 have at least 85%, 90%, 95%, 96%, 97%, 98%, 99% or 100% sequence identity, based on the Clustal V method of alignment, or (c) the complement of the first or second nucleotide sequence, wherein the complement and the first or second nucleotide sequence contain the same number of nucleotides and are 100% complementary. The first polypeptide preferably comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:8, and the second polypeptide preferably comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2, SEQ ID NO:4, or SEQ ID NO:10. The first nucleotide sequence preferably comprises the nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO:7, the second nucleotide sequence preferably comprises the nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO:1, SEQ ID NO:3, or SEQ ID NO:9. The first and second polypeptides preferably have phosphoglucomutase activity.

In a second embodiment, the present invention relates to a recombinant DNA construct comprising any of the isolated polynucleotides of the present invention operably linked to at least one regulatory sequence.

In a third embodiment, the present invention relates to a vector comprising any of the isolated polynucleotides of the present invention.

In a fourth embodiment, the present invention relates to an isolated polynucleotide fragment comprising a nucleotide sequence comprised by any of the polynucleotides of the present invention, wherein the nucleotide sequence contains at least 30, 40, 60, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 or 541 nucleotides.

In a fifth embodiment, the present invention relates to a method for transforming a cell comprising transforming a cell with any of the isolated polynucleotides of the present invention, and the cell transformed by this method. Advantageously, the cell is eukaryotic, e.g., a yeast or plant cell, or prokaryotic, e.g., a bacterium.

In a sixth embodiment, the invention concerns a method for transforming a cell, comprising transforming a cell with a polynucleotide of the present invention.

In a seventh embodiment, the present invention relates to a method for producing a transgenic plant comprising transforming a plant cell with any of the isolated polynucleotides of the present invention and regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant cell.

In an eighth embodiment, the invention concerns a cell, plant, or seed comprising a recombinant DNA construct of the present invention.

In a ninth embodiment, the present invention concerns an isolated polypeptide comprising: (a) a first amino acid sequence comprising at least 560 amino acids, wherein the first amino acid sequence and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:8 have at least 95%, 96%, 97%, 98%, 99% or 100% sequence identity, based on the Clustal V method of alignment, and (b) a second amino acid sequence comprising at least 560 amino acids, wherein the second amino acid sequence and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2, SEQ ID NO:4, or SEQ ID NO:10 have at least 85%, 90%, 95%, 96%, 97%, 98%, 99% or 100% sequence identity, based on the Clustal V method of alignment. The first amino acid sequence preferably comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:8, and the second amino acid sequence preferably comprises the amino acid sequence SEQ ID NO:2, SEQ ID NO:4, or SEQ ID NO:10. The polypeptide preferably has phosphoglucomutase activity.

In a tenth embodiment, the present invention relates to a virus, preferably a baculovirus, comprising any of the isolated polynucleotides of the present invention or any of the recombinant DNA constructs of the present invention.

In an eleventh embodiment, the invention relates to a method of selecting an isolated polynucleotide that alters, i.e., increases or decreases, the level of expression of a phosphoglucomutase gene, protein or enzyme activity in a host cell, preferably a plant cell, the method comprising the steps of: (a) constructing an isolated polynucleotide of the present invention or an isolated recombinant DNA construct of the present invention; (b) introducing the isolated polynucleotide or the isolated recombinant DNA construct into a host cell; (c) measuring the level of the phosphoglucomutase RNA, protein or enzyme activity in the host cell containing the isolated polynucleotide or recombinant DNA construct; (d) comparing the level of the phosphoglucomutase RNA, protein or enzyme activity in the host cell containing the isolated polynucleotide or recombinant DNA construct with the level of the phosphoglucomutase RNA, protein or enzyme activity in a host cell that does not contain the isolated polynucleotide or recombinant DNA construct, and selecting the isolated polynucleotide or recombinant DNA construct that alters, i.e., increases or decreases, the level of expression of the phosphoglucomutase gene, protein or enzyme activity in the plant cell.

In a twelfth embodiment, the invention concerns a method of obtaining a nucleic acid fragment encoding a substantial portion of a phosphoglucomutase protein, preferably a plant phosphoglucomutase protein, comprising the steps of: synthesizing an oligonucleotide primer comprising a nucleotide sequence of at least 30 contiguous nucleotides, preferably at least 40 contiguous nucleotides, more preferably at least 60 contiguous nucleotides derived from a nucleotide sequence selected from the group consisting of SEQ ID NOs:1, 3, 5, 7, and 9, and the complement of such nucleotide sequences; and amplifying a nucleic acid fragment (preferably a cDNA inserted in a cloning vector) using the oligonucleotide primer. The amplified nucleic acid fragment preferably will encode a substantial portion of a phosphoglucomutase protein amino acid sequence.

In a thirteenth embodiment, the invention relates to a method of obtaining a nucleic acid fragment encoding all or a substantial portion of the amino acid sequence encoding a phosphoglucomutase protein comprising the steps of: probing a cDNA or genomic library with an isolated polynucleotide of the present invention; identifying a DNA clone that hybridizes with an isolated polynucleotide of the present invention; isolating the identified DNA clone; and sequencing the cDNA or genomic fragment that comprises the isolated DNA clone.

In a fourteenth embodiment, the invention concerns a method for positive selection of a transformed cell comprising: (a) transforming a host cell with the recombinant DNA construct of the present invention or an expression cassette of the present invention; and (b) growing the transformed host cell, preferably a plant cell, such as a monocot or a dicot, under conditions which allow expression of the phosphoglucomutase polynucleotide in an amount sufficient to complement a null mutant to provide a positive selection means.

In a fifteenth embodiment, this invention concerns a method for suppressing the level of expression of a gene encoding a plastidic polypeptide having phosphoglucomutase activity in a transgenic plant, wherein the method comprises:

-   -   (a) transforming a plant cell with a fragment of the isolated         polynucleotide of the invention;     -   (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant         cell of (a); and     -   (c) selecting a transgenic plant wherein the level of expression         of a gene encoding a plastidic polypeptide having         phosphoglucomutase activity has been suppressed.

Preferably, the gene encodes a plastidic polypeptide having phosphoglucomutase activity, and the plant is a soybean plant.

In a sixteenth embodiment, the invention concerns a method for producing transgenic seed, the method comprising:

-   -   (a) transforming a plant cell with the recombinant DNA construct         of     -   (i) all or part of the nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID         NO:7 or SEQ ID NO:15; or     -   (ii) the complement of (i);     -   wherein (i) or (ii) is useful in co-suppression or antisense         suppression of endogenous phosphoglucomutase activity in a         transgenic plant;     -   (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant         cell of (a); and     -   (c) selecting a transgenic plant that produces a transgenic seed         having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at         least 1.6% and a decrease in the sucrose content of at least 25%         as compared to seed obtained from a non-transgenic plant.

Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.

In a seventeenth embodiment, the invention concerns a method for producing transgenic seed, the method comprising:

-   -   (a) transforming a plant cell with a recombinant DNA construct         comprising     -   (i) all or part of the nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID         NO:7 or SEQ ID NO:15; or     -   (ii) the complement of (i);     -   wherein (i) or (ii) is useful in co-suppression or antisense         suppression of endogenous phosphoglucomutase activity in a         transgenic plant;     -   (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant         cell of (a); and     -   (c) selecting a transgenic plant that produces a transgenic seed         having a sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio of         1.0 or less as compared to seed obtained from a non-transgenic         plant.

Preferably, the transgenic seed differs from an untransformed seed by having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 1.6%, 1.8% or 2.0%. Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.

In an eighteenth embodiment, the invention concerns a method for producing defatted meal from transgenic seed, comprising:

-   -   (a) transforming a plant cell with a recombinant DNA construct         comprising     -   (i) all or part of the nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID         NO:7 or SEQ ID NO:15; or     -   (ii) the complement of (i);     -   wherein (i) or (ii) is useful in co-suppression or antisense         suppression of endogenous phosphoglucomutase activity in a         transgenic plant;     -   (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant         cell of (a); and     -   (c) selecting a transgenic plant that produces a transgenic seed         wherein said seed is processed into defatted meal having an         increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 5%         and a decrease in the sucrose content of at least 25% as         compared to defatted meal obtained from seed of a non-transgenic         plant.

Preferably, the defatted meal of the transgenic seed differs from the defatted meal of an untransformed seed by having a sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio of 1.0 or less. Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.

In a nineteenth embodiment, the invention concerns a transgenic seed that differs from an non-transgenic seed by having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 1.6%, 1.8% or 2.0%, and a decrease in the sucrose content of at least 25%. Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.

In a twentieth embodiment, the invention concerns a transgenic seed that differs from non-transgenic seed by having a sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio of 1.0 or less. Preferably, the transgenic seed differs from an untransformed seed by having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 1.6%, 1.8% or 2.0%. Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.

In a twenty-first embodiment, the invention concerns a transgenic seed comprising a recombinant construct comprising (i) all or part of the nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO:7 or SEQ ID NO:15; or

(ii) the complement of (i);

wherein (i) or (ii) is useful in co-suppression or antisense suppression of endogenous phosphoglucomutase activity in a transgenic plant;

further wherein said transgenic seed is processed to make defatted meal having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 5% and a decrease in the sucrose content of at least 25% when compared to defatted meal obtained from a non-transgenic seed.

Preferably, the defatted meal of the transgenic seed differs from the defatted meal of an untransformed seed by having a sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio of 1.0 or less. Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.

In a twenty-second embodiment, the invention concerns a recombinant DNA construct comprising: (a) all or part of the nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO:7 or SEQ ID NO:15; or (b) the complement of (a); wherein (a) or (b) is useful in co-suppression or antisense suppression of endogenous phosphoglucomutase activity in a transgenic plant.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES AND SEQUENCE LISTING

The invention can be more fully understood from the following detailed description and the accompanying Drawing and Sequence Listing which form a part of this application.

FIGS. 1A-1D show an alignment of the amino acid sequences of plastidic phosphoglucomutase encoded by the nucleotide sequences derived from the following: cattail clone etr1c.pk005.f8 (SEQ ID NO:2); corn contig (SEQ ID NO:4) composed of p0075.cslaf22f (EST), p0075.cslaf22rb (EST), and p0128.cpicz81r (EST); soybean contig (SEQ ID NO:8) composed of clone sdp3c.pk003.e22 and PCR fragments; rice clone rdi1c.pk001.a22 (SEQ ID NO:10); plastidic phosphoglucomutase from Brassica napus (NCBI General Identifier No. 6272125; SEQ ID NO:11); plastidic phosphoglucomutase from Pisum sativum (NCBI General Identifier No. 6272283; SEQ ID NO:12); and plastidic phosphoglucomutase from Pisum sativum described in European Patent Application EP 1001029-A (NCBI General Identifier No. 10190529; SEQ ID NO:13). For the consensus alignment, amino acids which are conserved among all sequences at a given position, and which are contained in at least two sequences, are indicated with an asterisk (*). Dashes are used by the program to maximize alignment of the sequences. Amino acid positions for a given SEQ ID NO are given to the left of the corresponding line of sequence. Amino acid positions for the consensus alignment are given below each section of sequence.

FIG. 2 shows the starch accumulation expressed as mg/g fresh weight (top) and mg/seed (bottom) in plastidic PGM-silenced seeds (ko) as compared to wild-type seeds (wt).

FIG. 3 shows the soluble carbohydrate concentrations of growth chamber (GC) or field grown (field) T2 seeds from plastidic PGM-silenced events (KO) as compared to their null segregants (WT).

FIG. 4 shows soluble carbohydrate concentrations of T3 seeds from plastidic PGM-silenced events as compared to wild-type. PGM-silenced seeds with a 92B91 genetic background were compared to a 92B91 null event, while PGM-silenced seeds with a Jack background were compared to a Jack null event.

FIG. 5 shows the soluble carbohydrate profile of defatted soybean meal from T2 seeds.

Table 1 lists the polypeptides that are described herein, the designation of the cDNA clones that comprise the nucleic acid fragments encoding polypeptides representing all or a substantial portion of these polypeptides, and the corresponding identifier (SEQ ID NO:) as used in the attached Sequence Listing. Table 1 also identifies the cDNA clones as individual ESTs (“EST”), the sequences of the entire cDNA inserts comprising the indicated cDNA clones (“FIS”), contigs assembled from two or more ESTs (“Contig”), contigs assembled from an FIS and one or more ESTs (“Contig*”), or sequences encoding the entire or functional protein derived from an FIS, a contig, an EST and PCR, or an FIS and PCR (“CGS”). Nucleotide SEQ ID NOs:1, 3, 5, and 7 correspond to nucleotide SEQ ID NOs:1, 3, 5, and 7, respectively, presented in U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/218,712, filed Jul. 17, 2000. Amino acid SEQ ID NOs:2, 4, 6, and 8 correspond to amino acid SEQ ID NOs:2, 4, 6, and 8, respectively, presented in U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/218,712, filed Jul. 17, 2000. The sequence descriptions and Sequence Listing attached hereto comply with the rules governing nucleotide and/or amino acid sequence disclosures in patent applications as set forth in 37 C.F.R. §1.821-1.825.

TABLE 1 Plastidic Phosphoglucomutase Proteins SEQ ID NO: Protein Amino (Plant Source) Clone Designation Status Nucleotide Acid Plastidic etr1c.pk005.f8 (FIS) CGS 1 2 Phospho- glucomutase (Cattail) Plastidic Contig Composed of: CGS 3 4 Phospho- p0075.cslaf22f (EST); glucomutase p0075.cslaf22rb (Corn) (EST); p0128.cpicz81r (EST) Plastidic rth1c.pk009.k14.f EST 5 6 Phospho- (EST) glucomutase (Rice) Plastidic Contig Composed of: CGS 7 8 Phospho- sdp3c.pk003.e22 glucomutase (EST); PCR (Soybean) Fragments Plastidic rdi1c.pk001.a22 (FIS) CGS 9 10 Phospho- glucomutase (Rice)

SEQ ID NO:10 corresponds to a direct translation of the nucleotide sequence for the full insert of rice clone rdi1c.pk001.a22. The amino acid sequence in SEQ ID NO:10 includes a 46 amino acid open-reading frame directly in front of, and in frame with, the methionine start codon.

SEQ ID NO:11 corresponds to plastidic phosphoglucomutase from Brassica napus (NCBI General Identifier No. 6272125).

SEQ ID NO:12 corresponds to plastidic phosphoglucomutase from Pisum sativum (NCBI General Identifier No. 6272283).

SEQ ID NO:13 corresponds to and plastidic phosphoglucomutase from Pisum sativum described in European Patent Application EP 1001029-A (NCBI General Identifier No. 10190529).

SEQ ID NO:14 corresponds to a 574 nucleotide NotI fragment from plasmid pTC103; this fragment contains a 541 nucleotide region of soybean plastidic phosphoglucomutase, a 19 nucleotide artificial sequence at the 5′ end and a 14 nucleotide artificial sequence at the 3′ end.

SEQ ID NO:15 corresponds to the 541 nucleotide region of soybean plastidic phosphoglucomutase contained in SEQ ID NO:14.

SEQ ID NO:16 corresponds to the full-insert sequence (FIS) of corn clone p0075.cslaf22rb.

SEQ ID NO:17 corresponds to the nucleotide sequence of plasmid pKS133.

SEQ ID NO:18 corresponds to a synthetic DNA linker.

SEQ ID NO:19 corresponds to synthetic complementary region of pKS106 and pKS124.

SEQ ID NO:20 corresponds to a synthetic complementary region of pKS133.

SEQ ID NO:21 corresponds to a synthetic PCR primer.

SEQ ID NO:22 corresponds to a synthetic PCR primer.

SEQ ID NO:23 corresponds to a nucleotide sequence of a contig made from the full-insert sequences of the cDNA inserts of soybean clones ses4d.pk0018.d10 and sdp2c.pk008.m2. The first 107 nucleotides of the contig were obtained from the sequence of clone ses4d.pk0018.d10.

SEQ ID NO:24 corresponds to the amino acid sequence of a large subunit polypeptide of soybean ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase, and is encoded by nucleotides 42-1637 of SEQ ID NO:23.

SEQ ID NO:25 corresponds to the amino acid sequence of the large subunit of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase from chickpea, Cicer arietinum (NCBI General Identifier No. 13487785).

SEQ ID NO:26 corresponds to the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:248406 from U.S. Patent Application US2004031072.

SEQ ID NO:27 corresponds to a nucleotide sequence obtained from the full-length sequence of the cDNA insert of soybean clone ssm.pk0072.e7:fis.

SEQ ID NO:28 corresponds to the amino acid sequence of a first small subunit polypeptide, SS1, of the soybean ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase, and is encoded by nucleotides 80-1627 of SEQ ID NO:27.

SEQ ID NO:29 corresponds to a nucleotide sequence of a contig made from the EST sequence of soybean clone ssl.pk0021.h3 and the full-insert sequence of soybean clone sgs4c.pk005.b10. The first 58 nucleotides of the contig were obtained from the sequence of clone ssl.pk0021.h3.

SEQ ID NO:30 corresponds to the amino acid sequence of a second small subunit polypeptide, SS2, of the soybean ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase, and is encoded by nucleotides 47-1594 of SEQ ID NO:29.

SEQ ID NO:31 corresponds to the amino acid sequence of the small subunit, PvAGPS1, of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase from Phaseolus vulgaris (NCBI General Identifier No. 29421116).

SEQ ID NO:32 corresponds to the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:251944 from U.S. Patent Application US2004031072.

The Sequence Listing contains the one letter code for nucleotide sequence characters and the three letter codes for amino acids as defined in conformity with the IUPAC-IUBMB standards described in Nucleic Acids Res. 13:3021-3030 (1985) and in the Biochemical J. 219 (No. 2):345-373 (1984) which are herein incorporated by reference. The symbols and format used for nucleotide and amino acid sequence data comply with the rules set forth in 37 C.F.R. §1.822.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

All patents, patent applications, and publications cited throughout the application are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.

In the context of this disclosure, a number of terms shall be utilized.

The term “raffinose family oligosaccharides” (RFOs) indicates a group of D-galactose containing oligosaccharides that are synthesized by a set of galactosyltransferases. Raffinose family oligosaccharides are characterized by having the general formula: O-β-D-galactopyranosyl-(1→6)_(n)-α-D-glucopyranosyl-(1→2)-β-D-fructofuranoside, where oligosaccharides with n=1 through n=4 are known respectively as raffinose, stachyose, verbascose, and ajugose. Examples of raffinose family oligosaccharides include, but are not limited to, raffinose, stachyose, verbascose and ajugose.

The term “plant” includes reference to whole plants, plant parts or organs (e.g., leaves, stems, roots, etc.), plant cells, seeds and progeny of same. Plant cell, as used herein includes, without limitation, cells obtained from or found in the following: seeds, suspension cultures, embryos, meristematic regions, callus tissue, leaves, roots, shoots, gametophytes, sporophytes, pollen and microspores. Plant cells can also be understood to include modified cells, such as protoplasts, obtained from the aforementioned tissues. The class of plants which can be used in the methods of the invention is generally as broad as the class of higher plants amenable to transformation techniques, including both monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants.

Examples of monocots include, but are not limited to, corn, wheat, rice, sorghum, millet, barley, palm, lily, Alstroemeria, rye, and oat.

Examples of dicots include, but are not limited to, soybean, rape, sunflower, canola, grape, guayule, columbine, cotton, tobacco, peas, beans, flax, safflower, and alfalfa.

Plant tissue includes differentiated and undifferentiated tissues or plants, including but not limited to, roots, stems, shoots, leaves, pollen, seeds, tumor tissue, and various forms of cells and culture such as single cells, protoplasm, embryos, and callus tissue. The plant tissue may in plant or in organ, tissue or cell culture.

The term “plant organ” refers to plant tissue or group of tissues that constitute a morphologically and functionally distinct part of a plant. The term “genome” refers to the following: 1. The entire complement of genetic material (genes and non-coding sequences) is present in each cell of an organism, or virus or organelle. 2. A complete set of chromosomes inherited as a (haploid) unit from one parent. The term “stably integrated” refers to the transfer of a nucleic acid fragment into the genome of a host organism or cell resulting in genetically stable inheritance.

The terms “polynucleotide”, “polynucleotide sequence”, “nucleic acid”, nucleic acid sequence”, and “nucleic acid fragment” are used interchangeably herein. These terms encompass nucleotide sequences and the like. A polynucleotide may be a polymer of RNA or DNA that is single- or double-stranded, that optionally contains synthetic, non-natural or altered nucleotide bases. A polynucleotide in the form of a polymer of DNA may be comprised of one or more segments of cDNA, genomic DNA, synthetic DNA, or mixtures thereof.

The term “isolated” refers to materials, such as “isolated nucleic acid fragments” and/or “isolated polypeptides”, which are substantially free or otherwise removed from components that normally accompany or interact with the materials in a naturally occurring environment. Isolated polynucleotides may be purified from a host cell in which they naturally occur. Conventional nucleic acid purification methods known to skilled artisans may be used to obtain isolated polynucleotides. The term also embraces recombinant polynucleotides and chemically synthesized polynucleotides.

The term “isolated nucleic acid fragment” is used interchangeably with “isolated polynucleotide” and is a polymer of RNA or DNA that is single- or double-stranded, optionally containing synthetic, non-natural or altered nucleotide bases. An isolated nucleic acid fragment in the form of a polymer of DNA may be comprised of one or more segments of cDNA, genomic DNA or synthetic DNA. Nucleotides (usually found in their 5′-monophosphate form) are referred to by their single letter designation as follows: “A” for adenylate or deoxyadenylate (for RNA or DNA, respectively), “C” for cytidylate or deoxycytidylate, “G” for guanylate or deoxyguanylate, “U” for uridylate, “T” for deoxythymidylate, “R” for purines (A or G), “Y” for pyrimidines (C or T), “K” for G or T, “H” for A or C or T, “I” for inosine, and “N” for any nucleotide.

The terms “subfragment that is functionally equivalent” and “functionally equivalent subfragment” are used interchangeably herein. These terms refer to a portion or subsequence of an isolated nucleic acid fragment in which the ability to alter gene expression or produce a certain phenotype is retained whether or not the fragment or subfragment encodes an active enzyme. For example, the fragment or subfragment can be used in the design of recombinant DNA constructs to produce the desired phenotype in a transformed plant. Recombinant DNA constructs can be designed for use in co-suppression or antisense by linking a nucleic acid fragment or subfragment thereof, whether or not it encodes an active enzyme, in the appropriate orientation relative to a plant promoter sequence.

“Cosuppression” refers to the production of sense RNA transcripts capable of suppressing the expression of identical or substantially similar native genes (U.S. Pat. No. 5,231,020). Cosuppression technology constitutes the subject matter of U.S. Pat. No. 5,231,020, which issued to Jorgensen et al. on Jul. 27, 1999. The phenomenon observed by Napoli et al. in petunia was referred to as “cosuppression” since expression of both the endogenous gene and the introduced transgene were suppressed (for reviews see Vaucheret et al., Plant J. 16:651-659 (1998); and Gura, Nature 404:804-808 (2000)).

Co-suppression constructs in plants previously have been designed by focusing on overexpression of a nucleic acid sequence having homology to an endogenous mRNA, in the sense orientation, which results in the reduction of all RNA having homology to the overexpressed sequence (see Vaucheret et al. (1998) Plant J 16:651-659; and Gura (2000) Nature 404:804-808). The overall efficiency of this phenomenon is low, and the extent of the RNA reduction is widely variable. Recent work has described the use of “hairpin” structures that incorporate all, or part, of an mRNA encoding sequence in a complementary orientation that results in a potential “stem-loop” structure for the expressed RNA (PCT Publication WO 99/53050 published on Oct. 21, 1999). This increases the frequency of co-suppression in the recovered transgenic plants. Another variation describes the use of plant viral sequences to direct the suppression, or “silencing”, of proximal mRNA encoding sequences (PCT Publication WO 98/36083 published on Aug. 20, 1998). Both of these co-suppressing phenomena have not been elucidated mechanistically, although recent genetic evidence has begun to unravel this complex situation (Elmayan et al. (1998) Plant Cell 10:1747-1757).

In addition to cosuppression, antisense technology has also been used to block the function of specific genes in cells. Antisense RNA is complementary to the normally expressed RNA, and presumably inhibits gene expression by interacting with the normal RNA strand. The mechanisms by which the expression of a specific gene are inhibited by either antisense or sense RNA are on their way to being understood. However, the frequencies of obtaining the desired phenotype in a transgenic plant may vary with the design of the construct, the gene, the strength and specificity of its promoter, the method of transformation and the complexity of transgene insertion events (Baulcombe, Curr. Biol. 12(3):R82-84 (2002); Tang et al., Genes Dev. 17(1):49-63 (2003); Yu et al., Plant Cell. Rep. 22(3):167-174 (2003)). Cosuppression and antisense inhibition are also referred to as “gene silencing”, “post-transcriptional gene silencing” (PTGS), RNA interference or RNAi. See for example U.S. Pat. No. 6,506,559.

MicroRNAs (miRNA) are small regulatory RNSs that control gene expression. miRNAs bind to regions of target RNAs and inhibit their translation and, thus, interfere with production of the polypeptide encoded by the target RNA. miRNAs can be designed to be complementary to any region of the target sequence RNA including the 3′ untranslated region, coding region, etc. miRNAs are processed from highly structured RNA precursors that are processed by the action of a ribonuclease III termed DICER. While the exact mechanism of action of miRNAs is unknown, it appears that they function to regulate expression of the target gene. See, e.g., U.S. Patent Publication No. 2004/0268441 A1 which was published on Dec. 30, 2004.

The term “expression”, as used herein, refers to the production of a functional end-product, be it mRNA or translation of mRNA into a polypeptide. “Antisense inhibition” refers to the production of antisense RNA transcripts capable of suppressing the expression of the target protein. “Co-suppression” refers to the production of sense RNA transcripts capable of suppressing the expression of identical or substantially similar foreign or endogenous genes (U.S. Pat. No. 5,231,020).

“Overexpression” refers to the production of a functional end-product in transgenic organisms that exceeds levels of production when compared to expression of that functional end-product in a normal, wild type or non-transformed organism.

“Stable transformation” refers to the transfer of a nucleic acid fragment into a genome of a host organism, including both nuclear and organellar genomes, resulting in genetically stable inheritance. In contrast, “transient transformation” refers to the transfer of a nucleic acid fragment into the nucleus, or DNA-containing organelle, of a host organism resulting in gene expression without integration or stable inheritance. Host organisms containing the transformed nucleic acid fragments are referred to as “transgenic” organisms. The preferred method of cell transformation of rice, corn and other monocots is using particle-accelerated or “gene gun” transformation technology (Klein et al. (1987) Nature (London) 327:70-73; U.S. Pat. No. 4,945,050), or an Agrobacterium-mediated method (Ishida Y. et al. (1996) Nature Biotech. 14:745-750). The term “transformation” as used herein refers to both stable transformation and transient transformation.

“Antisense inhibition” refers to the production of antisense RNA transcripts capable of suppressing the expression of the target protein.

As stated herein, “suppression” refers to the reduction of the level of enzyme activity or protein functionality detectable in a transgenic plant when compared to the level of enzyme activity or protein functionality detectable in a plant with the native enzyme or protein. The level of enzyme activity in a plant with the native enzyme is referred to herein as “wild type” activity. The level of protein functionality in a plant with the native protein is referred to herein as “wild type” functionality. The term “suppression” includes lower, reduce, decline, decrease, inhibit, eliminate and prevent. This reduction may be due to the decrease in translation of the native mRNA into an active enzyme or functional protein. It may also be due to the transcription of the native DNA into decreased amounts of mRNA and/or to rapid degradation of the native mRNA. The term “native enzyme” refers to an enzyme that is produced naturally in the desired cell.

“Gene silencing,” as used herein, is a general term that refers to decreasing mRNA levels as compared to wild-type plants, does not specify mechanism and is inclusive, and not limited to, anti-sense, cosuppression, viral-suppression, hairpin suppression and stem-loop suppression.

The terms “homology”, “homologous”, “substantially similar” and “corresponding substantially” are used interchangeably herein. They refer to nucleic acid fragments wherein changes in one or more nucleotide bases does not affect the ability of the nucleic acid fragment to mediate gene expression or produce a certain phenotype. These terms also refer to modifications of the nucleic acid fragments of the instant invention such as deletion or insertion of one or more nucleotides that do not substantially alter the functional properties of the resulting nucleic acid fragment relative to the initial, unmodified fragment. For example, alterations in a nucleic acid fragment which result in the production of a chemically equivalent amino acid at a given site, but do not effect the functional properties of the encoded polypeptide, are well known in the art. Thus, a codon for the amino acid alanine, a hydrophobic amino acid, may be substituted by a codon encoding another less hydrophobic residue, such as glycine, or a more hydrophobic residue, such as valine, leucine, or isoleucine. Similarly, changes which result in substitution of one negatively charged residue for another, such as aspartic acid for glutamic acid, or one positively charged residue for another, such as lysine for arginine, can also be expected to produce a functionally equivalent product. Nucleotide changes that result in alteration of the N-terminal and C-terminal portions of the polypeptide molecule would also not be expected to alter the activity of the polypeptide. Each of the proposed modifications is well within the routine skill in the art, as is determination of retention of biological activity of the encoded products. It is therefore understood, as those skilled in the art will appreciate, that the invention encompasses more than the specific exemplary sequences.

Moreover, the skilled artisan recognizes that substantially similar nucleic acid sequences encompassed by this invention are also defined by their ability to hybridize, under moderately stringent conditions (for example, 1×SSC, 0.1% SDS, 60° C.) with the sequences exemplified herein, or to any portion of the nucleotide sequences reported herein and which are functionally equivalent to the gene or the promoter of the invention. Stringency conditions can be adjusted to screen for moderately similar fragments, such as homologous sequences from distantly related organisms, to highly similar fragments, such as genes that duplicate functional enzymes from closely related organisms. Post-hybridization washes determine stringency conditions. One set of preferred conditions involves a series of washes starting with 6×SSC, 0.5% SDS at room temperature for 15 min, then repeated with 2×SSC, 0.5% SDS at 45° C. for 30 min, and then repeated twice with 0.2×SSC, 0.5% SDS at 50° C. for 30 min. A more preferred set of stringent conditions involves the use of higher temperatures in which the washes are identical to those above except for the temperature of the final two 30 min washes in 0.2×SSC, 0.5% SDS was increased to 60° C. Another preferred set of highly stringent conditions involves the use of two final washes in 0.1×SSC, 0.1% SDS at 65° C.

With respect to the degree of substantial similarity between the target (endogenous) mRNA and the RNA region in the construct having homology to the target mRNA, such sequences should be at least 25 nucleotides in length, preferably at least 50 nucleotides in length, more preferably at least 100 nucleotides in length, again more preferably at least 200 nucleotides in length, and most preferably at least 300 nucleotides in length; and should be at least 80% identical, preferably at least 85% identical, more preferably at least 90% identical, and most preferably at least 95% identical.

Substantially similar nucleic acid fragments of the instant invention may also be characterized by the percent identity of the amino acid sequences that they encode to the amino acid sequences disclosed herein, as determined by algorithms commonly employed by those skilled in this art. Suitable nucleic acid fragments (isolated polynucleotides of the present invention) encode polypeptides that are at least 70% identical, preferably at least 80% identical to the amino acid sequences reported herein. Preferred nucleic acid fragments encode amino acid sequences that are at least 85% identical to the amino acid sequences reported herein. More preferred nucleic acid fragments encode amino acid sequences that are at least 90% identical to the amino acid sequences reported herein. Most preferred are nucleic acid fragments that encode amino acid sequences that are at least 95% identical to the amino acid sequences reported herein.

It is well understood by one skilled in the art that many levels of sequence identity are useful in identifying related polypeptide sequences. Useful examples of percent identities are 50%, 55%, 60%, 65%, 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, or 95%, or any integer percentage from 55% to 100%.

Sequence alignments and percent similarity calculations may be determined using a variety of comparison methods designed to detect homologous sequences including, but not limited to, the Megalign program of the LASARGENE bioinformatics computing suite (DNASTAR Inc., Madison, Wis.). Unless stated otherwise, multiple alignment of the sequences provided herein were performed using the Clustal method of alignment (Higgins and Sharp (1989) CABIOS. 5:151-153) with the default parameters (GAP PENALTY=10, GAP LENGTH PENALTY=10). Default parameters for pairwise alignments and calculation of percent identity of protein sequences using the Clustal method are KTUPLE=1, GAP PENALTY=3, WINDOW=5 and DIAGONALS SAVED=5. For nucleic acids these parameters are KTUPLE=2, GAP PENALTY=5, WINDOW=4 and DIAGONALS SAVED=4. After alignment of the sequences, using the Clustal V program, it is possible to obtain a “percent identity” by viewing the “sequence distances” table on the same program.

Unless otherwise stated, “BLAST” sequence identity/similarity values provided herein refer to the value obtained using the BLAST 2.0 suite of programs using default parameters (Altschul et al., Nucleic Acids Res. 25:3389-3402 (1997)). Software for performing BLAST analyses is publicly available, e.g., through the National Center for Biotechnology Information. This algorithm involves first identifying high scoring sequence pairs (HSPs) by identifying short words of length W in the query sequence, which either match or satisfy some positive-valued threshold score T when aligned with a word of the same length in a database sequence. T is referred to as the neighborhood word score threshold (Altschul et al., supra). These initial neighborhood word hits act as seeds for initiating searches to find longer HSPs containing them. The word hits are then extended in both directions along each sequence for as far as the cumulative alignment score can be increased. Cumulative scores are calculated using, for nucleotide sequences, the parameters M (reward score for a pair of matching residues; always >0) and N (penalty score for mismatching residues; always <0). For amino acid sequences, a scoring matrix is used to calculate the cumulative score. Extension of the word hits in each direction are halted when: the cumulative alignment score falls off by the quantity X from its maximum achieved value; the cumulative score goes to zero or below, due to the accumulation of one or more negative-scoring residue alignments; or the end of either sequence is reached. The BLAST algorithm parameters W, T, and X determine the sensitivity and speed of the alignment. The BLASTN program (for nucleotide sequences) uses as defaults a wordlength (W) of 11, an expectation (E) of 10, a cutoff of 100, M=5, N=⁻4, and a comparison of both strands. For amino acid sequences, the BLASTP program uses as defaults a wordlength (W) of 3, an expectation (E) of 10, and the BLOSUM62 scoring matrix (see Henikoff & Henikoff, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 89:10915 (1989)).

“Sequence identity” or “identity” in the context of nucleic acid or polypeptide sequences refers to the nucleic acid bases or amino acid residues in the two sequences that are the same when aligned for maximum correspondence over a specified comparison window.

Thus, “Percentage of sequence identity” refers to the valued determined by comparing two optimally aligned sequences over a comparison window, wherein the portion of the polynucleotide sequence in the comparison window may comprise additions or deletions (i.e., gaps) as compared to the reference sequence (which does not comprise additions or deletions) for optimal alignment of the two sequences. The percentage is calculated by determining the number of positions at which the identical nucleic acid base or amino acid residue occurs in both sequences to yield the number of matched positions, dividing the number of matched positions by the total number of positions in the window of comparison and multiplying the results by 100 to yield the percentage of sequence identity. Useful examples of percent sequence identities include, but are not limited to, 50%, 55%, 60%, 65%, 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, or 95%, or any integer percentage from 55% to 100%. These identities can be determined using any of the programs described herein.

Sequence alignments and percent identity or similarity calculations may be determined using a variety of comparison methods designed to detect homologous sequences including, but not limited to, the Megalign program of the LASARGENE bioinformatics computing suite (DNASTAR Inc., Madison, Wis.). Multiple alignment of the sequences are performed using the Clustal V method of alignment (Higgins, D. G. and Sharp, P. M. (1989) Comput. Appl. Biosci. 5:151-153; Higgins, D. G. et al. (1992) Comput. Appl. Biosci. 8:189-191) with the default parameters (GAP PENALTY=10, GAP LENGTH PENALTY=10). Default parameters for pairwise alignments and calculation of percent identity of protein sequences using the Clustal method are KTUPLE=1, GAP PENALTY=3, WINDOW=5 and DIAGONALS SAVED=5. For nucleic acids these parameters are KTUPLE=2, GAP PENALTY=5, WINDOW=4 and DIAGONALS SAVED=4.

It is well understood by one skilled in the art that many levels of sequence identity are useful in identifying polypeptides, from other plant species, wherein such polypeptides have the same or similar function or activity. Useful examples of percent identities include, but are not limited to, 50%, 55%, 60%, 65%, 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, or 95%, or any integer percentage from 55% to 100%. Indeed, any integer amino acid identity from 50%-100% may be useful in describing the present invention. Also, of interest is any full or partial complement of this isolated nucleotide fragment.

The term “recombinant” means, for example, that a nucleic acid sequence is made by an artificial combination of two otherwise separated segments of sequence, e.g., by chemical synthesis or by the manipulation of isolated nucleic acids by genetic engineering techniques.

As used herein, “contig” refers to a nucleotide sequence that is assembled from two or more constituent nucleotide sequences that share common or overlapping regions of sequence homology. For example, the nucleotide sequences of two or more nucleic acid fragments can be compared and aligned in order to identify common or overlapping sequences. Where common or overlapping sequences exist between two or more nucleic acid fragments, the sequences (and thus their corresponding nucleic acid fragments) can be assembled into a single contiguous nucleotide sequence.

“Codon degeneracy” refers to divergence in the genetic code permitting variation of the nucleotide sequence without affecting the amino acid sequence of an encoded polypeptide. Accordingly, the instant invention relates to any nucleic acid fragment comprising a nucleotide sequence that encodes all or a substantial portion of the amino acid sequences set forth herein. The skilled artisan is well aware of the “codon-bias” exhibited by a specific host cell in usage of nucleotide codons to specify a given amino acid. Therefore, when synthesizing a nucleic acid fragment for improved expression in a host cell, it is desirable to design the nucleic acid fragment such that its frequency of codon usage approaches the frequency of preferred codon usage of the host cell.

The terms “synthetic nucleic acid” or “synthetic genes” refer to nucleic acid molecules assembled either in whole or in part from oligonucleotide building blocks that are chemically synthesized using procedures known to those skilled in the art. These building blocks are ligated and annealed to form larger nucleic acid fragments which may then be enzymatically assembled to construct the entire desired nucleic acid fragment. “Chemically synthesized”, as related to a nucleic acid fragment, means that the component nucleotides were assembled in vitro. Manual chemical synthesis of nucleic acid fragments may be accomplished using well established procedures, or automated chemical synthesis can be performed using one of a number of commercially available machines. Accordingly, the nucleic acid fragments can be tailored for optimal gene expression based on optimization of the nucleotide sequence to reflect the codon bias of the host cell. The skilled artisan appreciates the likelihood of successful gene expression if codon usage is biased towards those codons favored by the host. Determination of preferred codons can be based on a survey of genes derived from the host cell where sequence information is available.

“Gene” refers to a nucleic acid fragment that is capable of directing expression a specific protein or functional RNA.

“Native gene” refers to a gene as found in nature with its own regulatory sequences.

“Chimeric gene” or “recombinant DNA construct” are used interchangeably herein, and refers any gene that is not a native gene, comprising regulatory and coding sequences that are not found together in nature, or to an isolated native gene optionally modified and reintroduced into a host cell.

A chimeric gene may comprise regulatory sequences and coding sequences that are derived from different sources, or regulatory sequences and coding sequences derived from the same source, but arranged in a manner different than that found in nature. In one embodiment, a regulatory region and a coding sequence region are assembled from two different sources. In another embodiment, a regulatory region and a coding sequence region are derived from the same source but arranged in a manner different than that found in nature. In another embodiment, the coding sequence region is assembled from at least two different sources. In another embodiment, the coding region is assembled from the same source but in a manner not found in nature.

The term “endogenous gene” refers to a native gene in its natural location in the genome of an organism.

The term “foreign gene” refers to a gene not normally found in the host organism that is introduced into the host organism by gene transfer.

The term “transgene” refers to a gene that has been introduced into a host cell by a transformation procedure. Transgenes may become physically inserted into a genome of the host cell (e.g., through recombination) or may be maintained outside of a genome of the host cell (e.g., on an extrachromasomal array).

An “allele” is one of several alternative forms of a gene occupying a given locus on a chromosome. When the alleles present at a given locus on a pair of homologous chromosomes in a diploid plant are the same that plant is homozygous at that locus. If the alleles present at a given locus on a pair of homologous chromosomes in a diploid plant differ that plant is heterozygous at that locus. If a transgene is present on one of a pair of homologous chromosomes in a diploid plant that plant is hemizygous at that locus.

The term “coding sequence” refers to a DNA fragment that codes for a polypeptide having a specific amino acid sequence, or a structural RNA. The boundaries of a protein coding sequence are generally determined by a ribosome binding site (prokaryotes) or by an ATG start codon (eukaryotes) located at the 5′ end of the mRNA and a transcription terminator sequence located just downstream of the open reading frame at the 3′ end of the mRNA. A coding sequence can include, but is not limited to, DNA, cDNA, and recombinant nucleic acid sequences.

“Mature” protein refers to a post-translationally processed polypeptide; i.e., one from which any pre- or pro-peptides present in the primary translation product have been removed. “Precursor” protein refers to the primary product of translation of mRNA; i.e., with pre- and pro-peptides still present. Pre- and pro-peptides may be and are not limited to intracellular localization signals.

“RNA transcript” refers to the product resulting from RNA polymerase-catalyzed transcription of a DNA sequence. When the RNA transcript is a perfect complementary copy of the DNA sequence, it is referred to as the primary transcript or it may be a RNA sequence derived from post-transcriptional processing of the primary transcript and is referred to as the mature RNA. “Messenger RNA (mRNA)” refers to the RNA that is without introns and that can be translated into protein by the cell. “cDNA” refers to a DNA that is complementary to and synthesized from an mRNA template using the enzyme reverse transcriptase. The cDNA can be single-stranded or converted into the double-stranded form using the Klenow fragment of DNA polymerase I. “Sense” RNA refers to RNA transcript that includes the mRNA and can be translated into protein within a cell or in vitro. “Antisense RNA” refers to an RNA transcript that is complementary to all or part of a target primary transcript or mRNA and that blocks the expression of a target isolated nucleic acid fragment (U.S. Pat. No. 5,107,065). The complementarity of an antisense RNA may be with any part of the specific gene transcript, i.e., at the 5′ non-coding sequence, 3′ non-coding sequence, introns, or the coding sequence. “Functional RNA” refers to antisense RNA, ribozyme RNA, or other RNA that may not be translated but yet has an effect on cellular processes. The terms “complement” and “reverse complement” are used interchangeably herein with respect to mRNA transcripts, and are meant to define the antisense RNA of the message.

The term “endogenous RNA” refers to any RNA which is encoded by any nucleic acid sequence present in the genome of the host prior to transformation with the recombinant construct of the present invention, whether naturally-occurring or non-naturally occurring, i.e., introduced by recombinant means, mutagenesis, etc.

The term “non-naturally occurring” means artificial, not consistent with what is normally found in nature.

“Messenger RNA (mRNA)” refers to the RNA that is without introns and that can be translated into protein by the cell.

“cDNA” refers to a DNA that is complementary to and synthesized from a mRNA template using the enzyme reverse transcriptase. The cDNA can be single-stranded or converted into the double-stranded form using the Klenow fragment of DNA polymerase I.

“Sense” RNA refers to RNA transcript that includes the mRNA and can be translated into protein within a cell or in vitro.

“Antisense RNA” refers to an RNA transcript that is complementary to all or part of a target primary transcript or mRNA, and that blocks the expression of a target gene (U.S. Pat. No. 5,107,065). The complementarity of an antisense RNA may be with any part of the specific gene transcript, i.e., at the 5′ non-coding sequence, 3′ non-coding sequence, introns, or the coding sequence.

“Functional RNA” refers to antisense RNA, ribozyme RNA, or other RNA that may not be translated, yet has an effect on cellular processes. The terms “complement” and “reverse complement” are used interchangeably herein with respect to mRNA transcripts, and are meant to define the antisense RNA of the message.

The term “recombinant DNA construct” refers to a DNA construct assembled from nucleic acid fragments obtained from different sources. The types and origins of the nucleic acid fragments may be very diverse.

A “recombinant expression construct” contains a nucleic acid fragment operably linked to at least one regulatory element, that is capable of effecting expression of the nucleic acid fragment. The recombinant expression construct may also affect expression of a homologous sequence in a host cell.

In one embodiment the choice of recombinant expression construct is dependent upon the method that will be used to transform host cells. The skilled artisan is well aware of the genetic elements that must be present on the recombinant expression construct in order to successfully transform, select and propagate host cells. The skilled artisan will also recognize that different independent transformation events may be screened to obtain lines displaying the desired expression level and pattern. Such screening may be accomplished by, but is not limited to, Southern analysis of DNA, Northern analysis of mRNA expression, Western analysis of protein expression, or phenotypic analysis.

The term “operably linked” refers to the association of nucleic acid fragments on a single nucleic acid fragment so that the function of one is regulated by the other. For example, a promoter is operably linked with a coding sequence when it is capable of regulating the expression of that coding sequence (i.e., that the coding sequence is under the transcriptional control of the promoter). Coding sequences can be operably linked to regulatory sequences in a sense or antisense orientation. In another example, the complementary RNA regions of the invention can be operably linked, either directly or indirectly, 5′ to the target mRNA, or 3′ to the target mRNA, or within the target mRNA, or a first complementary region is 5′ and its complement is 3′ to the target mRNA.

“Regulatory sequences” refer to nucleotides located upstream (5′ non-coding sequences), within, or downstream (3′ non-coding sequences) of a coding sequence, and which may influence the transcription, RNA processing, stability, or translation of the associated coding sequence. Regulatory sequences may include, and are not limited to, promoters, translation leader sequences, introns, and polyadenylation recognition sequences.

“Promoter” refers to a DNA sequence capable of controlling the expression of a coding sequence or functional RNA. The promoter sequence consists of proximal and more distal upstream elements, the latter elements often referred to as enhancers. Accordingly, an “enhancer” is a DNA sequence which can stimulate promoter activity and may be an innate element of the promoter or a heterologous element inserted to enhance the level or tissue-specificity of a promoter. Promoter sequences can also be located within the transcribed portions of genes, and/or downstream of the transcribed sequences. Promoters may be derived in their entirety from a native gene, or be composed of different elements derived from different promoters found in nature, or even comprise synthetic DNA segments. It is understood by those skilled in the art that different promoters may direct the expression of an isolated nucleic acid fragment in different tissues or cell types, or at different stages of development, or in response to different environmental conditions. Promoters which cause an isolated nucleic acid fragment to be expressed in most cell types at most times are commonly referred to as “constitutive promoters”. New promoters of various types useful in plant cells are constantly being discovered; numerous examples may be found in the compilation by Okamuro and Goldberg, (1989) Biochemistry of Plants 15:1-82. It is further recognized that since in most cases the exact boundaries of regulatory sequences have not been completely defined, DNA fragments of some variation may have identical promoter activity.

Specific examples of promoters that may be useful in expressing the nucleic acid fragments of the invention include, but are not limited to, the oleosin promoter (PCT Publication WO99/65479, published Dec. 12, 1999), the maize 27 kD zein promoter (Ueda et al (1994) Mol. Cell. Biol. 14:4350-4359), the ubiquitin promoter (Christensen et al (1992) Plant Mol. Biol. 18:675-680), the SAM synthetase promoter (PCT Publication WO00/37662, published Jun. 29, 2000), the CaMV 35S (Odell et al (1985) Nature 313:810-812), and the promoter described in PCT Publication WO02/099063 published Dec. 12, 2002.

The “translation leader sequence” refers to a polynucleotide fragment located between the promoter of a gene and the coding sequence. The translation leader sequence is present in the fully processed mRNA upstream of the translation start sequence. The translation leader sequence may affect processing of the primary transcript to mRNA, mRNA stability or translation efficiency. Examples of translation leader sequences have been described (Turner, R. and Foster, G. D. (1995) Mol. Biotechnol. 3:225-236).

An “intron” is an intervening sequence in a gene that does not encode a portion of the protein sequence. Thus, such sequences are transcribed into RNA but are then excised and are not translated. The term is also used for the excised RNA sequences.

The “3′ non-coding sequences” refer to DNA sequences located downstream of a coding sequence and include polyadenylation recognition sequences and other sequences encoding regulatory signals capable of affecting mRNA processing or gene expression. The polyadenylation signal is usually characterized by affecting the addition of polyadenylic acid tracts to the 3′ end of the mRNA precursor. The use of different 3′ non-coding sequences is exemplified by Ingelbrecht, I. L., et al. (1989) Plant Cell 1:671-680.

Standard recombinant DNA and molecular cloning techniques used herein are well known in the art and are described more fully in Sambrook, J., Fritsch, E. F. and Maniatis, T. Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual; Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press: Cold Spring Harbor, 1989. Transformation methods are well known to those skilled in the art and are described below.

“PCR” or “Polymerase Chain Reaction” is a technique for the synthesis of large quantities of specific DNA segments, consists of a series of repetitive cycles (Perkin Elmer Cetus Instruments, Norwalk, Conn.). Typically, the double stranded DNA is heat denatured, the two primers complementary to the 3′ boundaries of the target segment are annealed at low temperature and then extended at an intermediate temperature. One set of these three consecutive steps is referred to as a cycle.

“Stable transformation” refers to the transfer of a nucleic acid fragment into a genome of a host organism, including nuclear and organellar genomes, resulting in genetically stable inheritance.

In contrast, “transient transformation” refers to the transfer of a nucleic acid fragment into the nucleus, or DNA-containing organelle, of a host organism resulting in gene expression without integration or stable inheritance.

Host organisms comprising the transformed nucleic acid fragments are referred to as “transgenic” organisms.

The term “amplified” means the construction of multiple copies of a nucleic acid sequence or multiple copies complementary to the nucleic acid sequence using at least one of the nucleic acid sequences as a template. Amplification systems include the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) system, ligase chain reaction (LCR) system, nucleic acid sequence based amplification (NASBA, Cangene, Mississauga, Ontario), Q-Beta Replicase systems, transcription-based amplification system (TAS), and strand displacement amplification (SDA). See, e.g., Diagnostic Molecular Microbiology: Principles and Applications, D. H. Persing et al., Ed., American Society for Microbiology, Washington, D.C. (1993). The product of amplification is termed an amplicon.

The term “chromosomal location” includes reference to a length of a chromosome which may be measured by reference to the linear segment of DNA which it comprises. The chromosomal location can be defined by reference to two unique DNA sequences, i.e., markers.

The term “marker” includes reference to a locus on a chromosome that serves to identify a unique position on the chromosome. A “polymorphic marker” includes reference to a marker which appears in multiple forms (alleles) such that different forms of the marker, when they are present in a homologous pair, allow transmission of each of the chromosomes in that pair to be followed. A genotype may be defined by use of one or a plurality of markers.

The present invention includes, inter alia, compositions and methods for modulating (i.e., increasing or decreasing) the level of plastidic polypeptides described herein in plants. The size of the starch and soluble carbohydrate pools in soybean seeds can be modulated by altering the expression of a specific gene, encoding plastidic phosphoglucomutase (pPGM), which is involved in the starch and soluble carbohydrate biosynthetic pathway.

Silencing of pPGM gene expression in transgenic soybeans seeds resulted in a drastic decrease of the transient starch pool accompanied by a reduction in soluble carbohydrates and a concomitant increase in combined oil and protein content. Elimination of the transient starch pool by silencing plastidic PGM gene expression in soybean seeds diverted carbon away from the soluble carbohydrate components of dry soybean seeds with the major decrease occurring in the sucrose pool. This is in contrast to PGM mutants of pea, Arabidopsis, and Nicotiana, where the carbon is mainly funneled into the soluble carbohydrate pool.

The data discussed below further indicates that soybean seeds deficient in plastidic PGM reallocate the carbon destined for starch biosynthesis toward the biosynthesis oil and protein and also alters the sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio.

In contrast, a 40% reduction in storage lipid content was observed in the Arabidopsis mutant pgm-1, which contains a point mutation in the AtPGM gene rendering the polypeptide nonfunctional (Periappuram et al., (2000) Plant Physiol. 122:1193-1199).

An alteration of plastidic PGM activity affects the allocation of carbon to the soluble carbohydrate pool as well as the allocation of carbon to oil and protein biosynthesis. This is accomplished with no adverse effect on plant and seed phenotype. Since all known soybean cultivars contain transient starch, silencing the plastidic PGM gene in any soybean cultivar should result in a decrease of the transient carbon reserve together with an increase in the combined oil and protein level. This increase in the combined oil and protein level is in addition to the oil and protein levels of the wild-type genotype, regardless of whether the level is low or high. For example, a soybean variety such as Sakaii-18 has 56% of its seed dry weight as protein and 14% as oil. A Pioneer soybean variety, 9306, contains 41% protein and 23% oil (as seed dry weight). Both genotypes would be expected to have an increase in the combined oil and protein content as well as altered sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio.

In one embodiment, the present invention concerns an isolated

polynucleotide comprising: (a) a first nucleotide sequence encoding a first polypeptide comprising at least 560 amino acids, wherein the amino acid sequence of the first polypeptide and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:8 have at least 95%, 96%, 97%, 98%, 99% or 100% sequence identity, based on the Clustal V method of alignment, (b) a second nucleotide sequence encoding a second polypeptide comprising at least 560 amino acids, wherein the amino acid sequence of the second polypeptide and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2, SEQ ID NO:4, or SEQ ID NO:10 have at least 85%, 90%, 95%, 96%, 97%, 98%, 99% or 100% sequence identity, based on the Clustal V method of alignment, or (c) the complement of the first or second nucleotide sequence, wherein the complement and the first or second nucleotide sequence contain the same number of nucleotides and are 100% complementary. The first polypeptide preferably comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:8, and the second polypeptide preferably comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2, SEQ ID NO:4, or SEQ ID NO:10. The first nucleotide sequence preferably comprises the nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO:7, the second nucleotide sequence preferably comprises the nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO:1, SEQ ID NO:3, or SEQ ID NO:9. The first and second polypeptides preferably have phosphoglucomutase activity.

In another embodiment, the present invention relates to a recombinant DNA construct comprising any of the isolated polynucleotides of the present invention operably linked to at least one regulatory sequence.

In another preferred embodiment of the present invention, a recombinant DNA construct of the present invention further comprises an enhancer.

In another embodiment, the present invention relates to a vector comprising any of the isolated polynucleotides of the present invention.

In another embodiment, the present invention relates to an isolated polynucleotide fragment comprising a nucleotide sequence comprised by any of the polynucleotides of the present invention, wherein the nucleotide sequence contains at least 30, 40, 60, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 or 541 nucleotides.

In another embodiment, the present invention relates to a method for transforming a cell comprising transforming a cell with any of the isolated polynucleotides of the present invention, and the cell transformed by this method. Advantageously, the cell is eukaryotic, e.g., a yeast or plant cell, or prokaryotic, e.g., a bacterium.

In another embodiment, the present invention relates to a method for transforming a cell, comprising transforming a cell with a polynucleotide of the present invention.

In another embodiment, the present invention relates to a method for producing a transgenic plant comprising transforming a plant cell with any of the isolated polynucleotides of the present invention and regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant cell.

In another embodiment, a cell, plant, or seed comprising a recombinant DNA construct of the present invention.

In another embodiment, the present invention concerns an isolated polypeptide comprising: (a) a first amino acid sequence comprising at least 560 amino acids, wherein the first amino acid sequence and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:8 have at least 95%, 96%, 97%, 98%, 99% or 100% sequence identity, based on the Clustal V method of alignment, and (b) a second amino acid sequence comprising at least 560 amino acids, wherein the second amino acid sequence and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2, SEQ ID NO:4, or SEQ ID NO:10 have at least 85%, 90%, 95%, 96%, 97%, 98%, 99% or 100% sequence identity, based on the Clustal V method of alignment. The first amino acid sequence preferably comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:8, and the second amino acid sequence preferably comprises the amino acid sequence SEQ ID NO:2, SEQ ID NO:4, or SEQ ID NO:10. The polypeptide preferably has phosphoglucomutase activity.

In another embodiment, the present invention relates to a virus, preferably a baculovirus, comprising any of the isolated polynucleotides of the present invention or any of the recombinant DNA constructs of the present invention.

In another embodiment, the invention relates to a method of selecting an isolated polynucleotide that alters, i.e., increases or decreases, the level of expression of a phosphoglucomutase gene, protein or enzyme activity in a host cell, preferably a plant cell, the method comprising the steps of: (a) constructing an isolated polynucleotide of the present invention or an isolated recombinant DNA construct of the present invention; (b) introducing the isolated polynucleotide or the isolated recombinant DNA construct into a host cell; (c) measuring the level of the phosphoglucomutase RNA, protein or enzyme activity in the host cell containing the isolated polynucleotide or recombinant DNA construct; (d) comparing the level of the phosphoglucomutase RNA, protein or enzyme activity in the host cell containing the isolated polynucleotide or recombinant DNA construct with the level of the phosphoglucomutase RNA, protein or enzyme activity in a host cell that does not contain the isolated polynucleotide or recombinant DNA construct, and selecting the isolated polynucleotide or recombinant DNA construct that alters, i.e., increases or decreases, the level of expression of the phosphoglucomutase gene, protein or enzyme activity in the plant cell.

In another embodiment, the invention concerns a method of obtaining a nucleic acid fragment encoding a substantial portion of a phosphoglucomutase protein, preferably a plant phosphoglucomutase protein, comprising the steps of: synthesizing an oligonucleotide primer comprising a nucleotide sequence of at least 30 contiguous nucleotides, preferably at least 40 contiguous nucleotides, more preferably at least 60 contiguous nucleotides derived from a nucleotide sequence selected from the group consisting of SEQ ID NOs:1, 3, 5, 7, and 9, and the complement of such nucleotide sequences; and amplifying a nucleic acid fragment (preferably a cDNA inserted in a cloning vector) using the oligonucleotide primer. The amplified nucleic acid fragment preferably will encode a substantial portion of a phosphoglucomutase protein amino acid sequence.

In another embodiment, the invention relates to a method of obtaining a nucleic acid fragment encoding all or a substantial portion of the amino acid sequence encoding a phosphoglucomutase protein comprising the steps of: probing a cDNA or genomic library with an isolated polynucleotide of the present invention; identifying a DNA clone that hybridizes with an isolated polynucleotide of the present invention; isolating the identified DNA clone; and sequencing the cDNA or genomic fragment that comprises the isolated DNA clone.

In another embodiment, the invention concerns a method for positive selection of a transformed cell comprising: (a) transforming a host cell with the recombinant DNA construct of the present invention or an expression cassette of the present invention; and (b) growing the transformed host cell, preferably a plant cell, such as a monocot or a dicot, under conditions which allow expression of the phosphoglucomutase polynucleotide in an amount sufficient to complement a null mutant to provide a positive selection means.

In another embodiment, this invention concerns a method for suppressing the level of expression of a gene encoding a plastidic polypeptide having phosphoglucomutase activity in a transgenic plant, wherein the method comprises:

-   -   (a) transforming a plant cell with a fragment of the isolated         polynucleotide of the invention;     -   (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant         cell of (a); and     -   (c) selecting a transgenic plant wherein the level of expression         of a gene encoding a plastidic polypeptide having         phosphoglucomutase activity has been suppressed.

Preferably, the gene encodes a plastidic polypeptide having phosphoglucomutase activity, and the plant is a soybean plant.

In another embodiment, the invention concerns a recombinant DNA construct comprising: (a) all or part of the nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO:7 or SEQ ID NO:15; or (b) the complement of (a); wherein (a) or (b) is useful in co-suppression or antisense suppression of endogenous phosphoglucomutase activity in a transgenic plant.

In another embodiment, the invention concerns a method for producing transgenic seed, the method comprising:

-   -   (a) transforming a plant cell with the recombinant DNA construct         of     -   (i) all or part of the nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID         NO:7 or SEQ ID NO:15; or     -   (ii) the complement of (i);     -   wherein (i) or (ii) is useful in co-suppression or antisense         suppression of endogenous phosphoglucomutase activity in a         transgenic plant;     -   (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant         cell of (a); and     -   (c) selecting a transgenic plant that produces a transgenic seed         having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at         least 1.6% and a decrease in the sucrose content of at least 25%         as compared to seed obtained from a non-transgenic plant.         Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.         In another embodiment, the invention concerns a method for         producing transgenic seed, the method comprising:     -   (a) transforming a plant cell with a recombinant DNA construct         comprising     -   (i) all or part of the nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID         NO:7 or SEQ ID NO:15; or     -   (ii) the complement of (i);     -   wherein (i) or (ii) is useful in co-suppression or antisense         suppression of endogenous phosphoglucomutase activity in a         transgenic plant;     -   (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant         cell of (a); and     -   (c) selecting a transgenic plant that produces a transgenic seed         having a sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio of         1.0 or less as compared to seed obtained from a non-transgenic         plant.

Preferably, the transgenic seed differs from an untransformed seed by having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 1.6%, 1.8% or 2.0%. Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.

In another embodiment, the invention concerns a method for producing defatted meal from transgenic seed, comprising:

-   -   (a) transforming a plant cell with a recombinant DNA construct         comprising (i) all or part of the nucleotide sequence set forth         in SEQ ID NO:7 or SEQ ID NO:15; or     -   (ii) the complement of (i);     -   wherein (i) or (ii) is useful in co-suppression or antisense         suppression of endogenous phosphoglucomutase activity in a         transgenic plant;     -   (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant         cell of (a); and     -   (c) selecting a transgenic plant that produces a transgenic seed         wherein said seed is processed into defatted meal having an         increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 5%         and a decrease in the sucrose content of at least 25% as         compared to defatted meal obtained from seed of a non-transgenic         plant.

Preferably, the defatted meal of the transgenic seed differs from the defatted meal of an untransformed seed by having a sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio of 1.0 or less. Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.

In a another embodiment, the invention concerns a transgenic seed that differs from an non-transgenic seed by having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 1.6%, 1.8% or 2.0%, and a decrease in the sucrose content of at least 25%. Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.

In another embodiment, the invention concerns a transgenic seed that differs from non-transgenic seed by having a sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio of 1.0 or less. Preferably, the transgenic seed differs from an untransformed seed by having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 1.6%, 1.8% or 2.0%. Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.

-   -   In another embodiment, the invention concerns a transgenic seed         comprising a recombinant construct comprising (i) all or part of         the nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO:7 or SEQ ID         NO:15; or     -   (ii) the complement of (i);     -   wherein (i) or (ii) is useful in co-suppression or antisense         suppression of endogenous phosphoglucomutase activity in a         transgenic plant;     -   further wherein said transgenic seed is processed to make         defatted meal having an increase in the combined oil and protein         content of at least 5% and a decrease in the sucrose content of         at least 25% when compared to defatted meal obtained from a         non-transgenic seed.

Preferably, the defatted meal of the transgenic seed differs from the defatted meal of an untransformed seed by having a sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio of 1.0 or less. Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.

Soybeans can be processed into a number of products. For example, “soy protein products” can include, and are not limited to, those items listed in Table A. “Soy protein products”.

TABLE A Soy Protein Products Derived from Soybean Seeds^(a) Processed Soy Protein Products Whole Soybean Products Roasted Soybeans Full Fat and Defatted Flours Baked Soybeans Soy Grits Soy Sprouts Soy Hypocotyls Soy Milk Soybean Meal Soy Milk Soy Protein Isolates Specialty Soy Foods/Ingredients Soy Milk Soy Protein Concentrates Tofu Textured Soy Proteins Tempeh Textured Flours and Concentrates Miso Textured Concentrates Soy Sauce Textured Isolates Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein Whipping Protein ^(a)See Soy Protein Products: Characteristics, Nutritional Aspects and Utilization (1987). Soy Protein Council.

“Processing” refers to any physical and chemical methods used to obtain the products listed in Table A and includes, and is not limited to, heat conditioning, flaking and grinding, extrusion, solvent extraction, or aqueous soaking and extraction of whole or partial seeds. Furthermore, “processing” includes the methods used to concentrate and isolate soy protein from whole or partial seeds, as well as the various traditional Oriental methods in preparing fermented soy food products. Trading Standards and Specifications have been established for many of these products (see National Oilseed Processors Association Yearbook and Trading Rules 1991-1992).

“White” flakes refer to flaked, dehulled cotyledons that have been defatted and treated with controlled moist heat to have a PDI (ASCS: ba10-65) of about 85 to 90. This term can also refer to a flour with a similar PDI that has been ground to pass through a No. 100 U.S. Standard Screen size.

“Grits” refer to defatted, dehulled cotyledons having a U.S. Standard screen size of between No. 10 and 80.

“Soy Protein Concentrates” refer to those products produced from dehulled, defatted soybeans by three basic processes: acid leaching (at about pH 4.5), extraction with alcohol (about 55-80%), and denaturing the protein with moist heat prior to extraction with water. Conditions typically used to prepare soy protein concentrates have been described by Pass ((1975) U.S. Pat. No. 3,897,574; Campbell et al., (1985) in New Protein Foods, ed. by Altschul and Wilcke, Academic Press, Vol. 5, Chapter 10, Seed Storage Proteins, pp 302-338).

“Extrusion” refers to processes whereby material (grits, flour or concentrate) is passed through a jacketed auger using high pressures and temperatures as a means of altering the texture of the material. “Texturing” and “structuring” refer to extrusion processes used to modify the physical characteristics of the material. The characteristics of these processes, including thermoplastic extrusion, have been described previously (Atkinson (1970) U.S. Pat. No. 3,488,770, Horan (1985) In New Protein Foods, ed. by Altschul and Wilcke, Academic Press, Vol. 1A, Chapter 8, pp 367-414). Moreover, conditions used during extrusion processing of complex foodstuff mixtures that include soy protein products have been described previously (Rokey (1983) Feed Manufacturing Technology III, 222-237; McCulloch, U.S. Pat. No. 4,454,804).

In another embodiment, this invention concerns a method for suppressing the level of expression of a gene encoding a polypeptide having ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase activity in a transgenic plant, wherein the method comprises:

-   -   (a) transforming a plant cell with a fragment SEQ ID NOs:24, 28         or 30, or their complement;     -   (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant         cell of (a); and     -   (c) selecting a transgenic plant wherein the level of expression         of a gene encoding a polypeptide having ADP-glucose         pyrophosphorylase activity has been suppressed.

Preferably, the plant is a soybean plant.

In another embodiment, the invention concerns a recombinant DNA construct comprising: (a) all or part of the nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID NOs:24, 28 or 30; or (b) the complement of (a); wherein (a) or (b) is useful in co-suppression or antisense suppression of endogenous ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase activity in a transgenic plant.

In another embodiment, the invention concerns a method for producing transgenic seed, the method comprising:

-   -   (a) transforming a plant cell with the recombinant DNA construct         of:     -   (i) all or part of the nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID         NO:24, 28 or 30; or     -   (ii) the complement of (i);     -   wherein (i) or (ii) is useful in co-suppression or antisense         suppression of endogenous ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase activity         in a transgenic plant;     -   (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant         cell of (a); and     -   (c) selecting a transgenic plant that produces a transgenic seed         having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at         least 1.6% and a decrease in the sucrose content of at least 25%         as compared to seed obtained from a non-transgenic plant.

Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.

In another embodiment, the invention concerns a method for producing transgenic seed, the method comprising:

-   -   (a) transforming a plant cell with a recombinant DNA construct         comprising     -   (i) all or part of the nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID         NOs:24, 28 or 30; or     -   (ii) the complement of (i);     -   wherein (i) or (ii) is useful in co-suppression or antisense         suppression of endogenous ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase activity         in a transgenic plant;     -   (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant         cell of (a); and     -   (c) selecting a transgenic plant that produces a transgenic seed         having a sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio of         1.0 or less as compared to seed obtained from a non-transgenic         plant.

Preferably, the transgenic seed differs from an untransformed seed by having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 1.6%, 1.8% or 2.0%. Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.

In another embodiment, the invention concerns a method for producing defatted meal from transgenic seed, comprising:

-   -   (a) transforming a plant cell with a recombinant DNA construct         comprising     -   (i) all or part of the nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID         NOs:24, 28 or 30; or     -   (ii) the complement of (i);     -   wherein (i) or (ii) is useful in co-suppression or antisense         suppression of endogenous ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase activity         in a transgenic plant;     -   (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant         cell of (a); and     -   (c) selecting a transgenic plant that produces a transgenic seed         wherein said seed is processed into defatted meal having an         increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 5%         and a decrease in the sucrose content of at least 25% as         compared to defatted meal obtained from seed of a non-transgenic         plant.

Preferably, the defatted meal of the transgenic seed differs from the defatted meal of an untransformed seed by having a sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio of 1.0 or less. Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.

In a another embodiment, the invention concerns a transgenic seed produced by any of the above methods. Preferably, the seed is a soybean seed.

Regulatory sequences may include, and are not limited to, promoters, translation leader sequences, introns, and polyadenylation recognition sequences.

“Tissue-specific” promoters direct RNA production preferentially in particular types of cells or tissues. Promoters which cause a gene to be expressed in most cell types at most times are commonly referred to as “constitutive promoters”. New promoters of various types useful in plant cells are constantly being discovered; numerous examples may be found in the compilation by Okamuro and Goldberg (Biochemistry of Plants 15:1-82 (1989)). It is further recognized that since in most cases the exact boundaries of regulatory sequences have not been completely defined, DNA fragments of some variation may have identical promoter activity.

A number of promoters can be used to practice the present invention. The promoters can be selected based on the desired outcome. The nucleic acids can be combined with constitutive, tissue-specific (preferred), inducible, or other promoters for expression in the host organism. Suitable constitutive promoters for use in a plant host cell include, for example, the core promoter of the Rsyn7 promoter and other constitutive promoters disclosed in WO 99/43838 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,072,050; the core CaMV 35S promoter (Odell et al., Nature 313:810-812 (1985)); rice actin (McElroy et al., Plant Cell 2:163-171 (1990)); ubiquitin (Christensen et al., Plant Mol. Biol. 12:619-632 (1989) and Christensen et al., Plant Mol. Biol. 18:675-689 (1992)); pEMU (Last et al., Theor. Appl. Genet. 81:581-588 (1991)); MAS (Velten et al., EMBO J. 3:2723-2730 (1984)); ALS promoter (U.S. Pat. No. 5,659,026), and the like. Other constitutive promoters include, for example, those discussed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,608,149; 5,608,144; 5,604,121; 5,569,597; 5,466,785; 5,399,680; 5,268,463; 5,608,142; and 6,177,611.

In choosing a promoter to use in the methods of the invention, it may be desirable to use a tissue-specific or developmentally regulated promoter. A tissue-specific or developmentally regulated promoter is a DNA sequence which regulates the expression of a DNA sequence selectively in particular cells/tissues of a plant. Any identifiable promoter may be used in the methods of the present invention which causes the desired temporal and spatial expression.

Promoters which are seed or embryo specific and may be useful in the invention include patatin (potato tubers) (Rocha-Sosa, M., et al. (1989) EMBO J. 8:23-29), convicilin, vicilin, and legumin (pea cotyledons) (Rerie, W. G., et al. (1991) Mol. Gen. Genet. 259:149-157; Newbigin, E. J., et al. (1990) Planta 180:461-470; Higgins, T. J. V., et al. (1988) Plant. Mol. Biol. 11:683-695), zein (maize endosperm) (Schemthaner, J. P., et al. (1988) EMBO J. 7:1249-1255), phaseolin (bean cotyledon) (Segupta-Gopalan, C., et al. (1985) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 82:3320-3324), phytohemagglutinin (bean cotyledon) (Voelker, T. et al. (1987) EMBO J. 6:3571-3577), B-conglycinin and glycinin (soybean cotyledon) (Chen, Z-L, et al. (1988) EMBO J. 7:297-302), glutelin (rice endosperm), hordein (barley endosperm) (Marris, C., et al. (1988) Plant Mol. Biol. 10:359-366), glutenin and gliadin (wheat endosperm) (Colot, V., et al. (1987) EMBO J. 6:3559-3564), and sporamin (sweet potato tuberous root) (Hattori, T., et al. (1990) Plant Mol. Biol. 14:595-604). Promoters of seed-specific genes operably linked to heterologous coding regions in chimeric gene constructions maintain their temporal and spatial expression pattern in transgenic plants. Such examples include Arabidopsis thaliana 2S seed storage protein gene promoter to express enkephalin peptides in Arabidopsis and Brassica napus seeds (Vanderkerckhove et al., Bio/Technology 7:L929-932 (1989)), bean lectin and bean beta-phaseolin promoters to express luciferase (Riggs et al., Plant Sci. 63:47-57 (1989)), and wheat glutenin promoters to express chloramphenicol acetyl transferase (Colot et al., EMBO J. 6:3559-3564 (1987)).

A plethora of promoters is described in WO 00/18963, published on Apr. 6, 2000, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference. Examples of seed-specific promoters include, and are not limited to, the promoter for soybean Kunitz trypsin inhibitor (Kti3, Jofuku and Goldberg, Plant Cell 1:1079-1093 (1989)) β-conglycinin (Chen et al., Dev. Genet. 10:112-122 (1989)), the napin promoter, and the phaseolin promoter.

In some embodiments, isolated nucleic acids which serve as promoter or enhancer elements can be introduced in the appropriate position (generally upstream) of a non-heterologous form of a polynucleotide of the present invention so as to up or down regulate expression of a polynucleotide of the present invention. For example, endogenous promoters can be altered in vivo by mutation, deletion, and/or substitution (see, Kmiec, U.S. Pat. No. 5,565,350; Zarling et al., PCT/US93/03868), or isolated promoters can be introduced into a plant cell in the proper orientation and distance from a cognate gene of a polynucleotide of the present invention so as to control the expression of the gene. Gene expression can be modulated under conditions suitable for plant growth so as to alter the total concentration and/or alter the composition of the polypeptides of the present invention in plant cell. Thus, the present invention includes compositions, and methods for making, heterologous promoters and/or enhancers operably linked to a native, endogenous (i.e., non-heterologous) form of a polynucleotide of the present invention.

An intron sequence can be added to the 5′ untranslated region or the coding sequence of the partial coding sequence to increase the amount of the mature message that accumulates in the cytosol. Inclusion of a spliceable intron in the transcription unit in both plant and animal expression constructs has been shown to increase gene expression at both the mRNA and protein levels up to 1000-fold (Buchman and Berg, Mol. Cell. Biol. 8:4395-4405 (1988); Callis et al., Genes Dev. 1:1183-1200 (1987)). Such intron enhancement of gene expression is typically greatest when placed near the 5′ end of the transcription unit. Use of maize introns Adh1-S intron 1, 2, and 6, the Bronze-1 intron are known in the art. See generally, The Maize Handbook, Chapter 116, Freeling and Walbot, Eds., Springer, New York (1994). A vector comprising the sequences from a polynucleotide of the present invention will typically comprise a marker gene which confers a selectable phenotype on plant cells. Typical vectors useful for expression of genes in higher plants are well known in the art and include vectors derived from the tumor-inducing (Ti) plasmid of Agrobacterium tumefaciens described by Rogers et al., Meth. in Enzymol. 153:253-277 (1987).

If polypeptide expression is desired, it is generally desirable to include a polyadenylation region at the 3′-end of a polynucleotide coding region. The polyadenylation region can be derived from the natural gene, from a variety of other plant genes, or from T-DNA. The 3′ end sequence to be added can be derived from, for example, the nopaline synthase or octopine synthase genes, or alternatively from another plant gene, or less preferably from any other eukaryotic gene.

Preferred recombinant DNA constructs include the following combinations: a) a nucleic acid fragment corresponding to a promoter operably linked to at least one nucleic acid fragment encoding a selectable marker, followed by a nucleic acid fragment corresponding to a terminator, b) a nucleic acid fragment corresponding to a promoter operably linked to a nucleic acid fragment capable of producing a stem-loop structure, and followed by a nucleic acid fragment corresponding to a terminator, and c) any combination of a) and b) above. Preferably, in the stem-loop structure at least one nucleic acid fragment that is capable of suppressing expression of a native gene comprises the “loop” and is surrounded by nucleic acid fragments capable of producing a stem.

Preferred methods for transforming dicots and obtaining transgenic plants have been published, among others, for cotton (U.S. Pat. No. 5,004,863, U.S. Pat. No. 5,159,135); soybean (U.S. Pat. No. 5,569,834, U.S. Pat. No. 5,416,011); Brassica (U.S. Pat. No. 5,463,174); peanut (Cheng et al. (1996) Plant Cell Rep. 15:653-657, McKently et al. (1995) Plant Cell Rep. 14:699-703); papaya (Ling, K. et al. (1991) Bio/technology 9:752-758); and pea (Grant et al. (1995) Plant Cell Rep. 15:254-258). For a review of other commonly used methods of plant transformation see Newell, C. A. (2000) Mol. Biotechnol. 16:53-65. One of these methods of transformation uses Agrobacterium rhizogenes (Tepfler, M. and Casse-Delbart, F. (1987) Microbiol. Sci. 4:24-28). Transformation of soybeans using direct delivery of DNA has been published using PEG fusion (PCT publication WO 92/17598), electroporation (Chowrira, G. M. et al. (1995) Mol. Biotechnol. 3:17-23; Christou, P. et al. (1987) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 84:3962-3966), microinjection, or particle bombardment (McCabe, D. E. et. Al. (1988) Bio/Technology 6:923; Christou et al. (1988) Plant Physiol. 87:671-674).

There are a variety of methods for the regeneration of plants from plant tissue. The particular method of regeneration will depend on the starting plant tissue and the particular plant species to be regenerated. The regeneration, development and cultivation of plants from single plant protoplast transformants or from various transformed explants are well known in the art (Weissbach and Weissbach, (1988) In.: Methods for Plant Molecular Biology, (Eds.), Academic Press, Inc., San Diego, Calif.). This regeneration and growth process typically includes the steps of selection of transformed cells, culturing those individualized cells through the usual stages of embryonic development through the rooted plantlet stage. Transgenic embryos and seeds are similarly regenerated. The resulting transgenic rooted shoots are thereafter planted in an appropriate plant growth medium such as soil. The regenerated plants may be self-pollinated. Otherwise, pollen obtained from the regenerated plants is crossed to seed-grown plants of agronomically important lines. Conversely, pollen from plants of these important lines is used to pollinate regenerated plants. A transgenic plant of the present invention containing a desired polypeptide(s) is cultivated using methods well known to one skilled in the art.

In addition to the above discussed procedures, practitioners are familiar with the standard resource materials which describe specific conditions and procedures for the construction, manipulation and isolation of macromolecules (e.g., DNA molecules, plasmids, etc.), generation of recombinant DNA fragments and recombinant expression constructs and the screening and isolating of clones, (see for example, Sambrook et al. (1989) Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual, Cold Spring Harbor Press; Maliga et al. (1995) Methods in Plant Molecular Biology, Cold Spring Harbor Press; Birren et al. (1998) Genome Analysis: Detecting Genes, 1, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.; Birren et al. (1998) Genome Analysis: Analyzing DNA, 2, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.; Plant Molecular Biology: A Laboratory Manual, eds. Clark, Springer, New York (1997)).

Assays to detect proteins may be performed by SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis or immunological assays. Assays to detect levels of substrates or products of enzymes may be performed using gas chromatography or liquid chromatography for separation and UV or visible spectrometry or mass spectrometry for detection, or the like. Determining the levels of mRNA of the enzyme of interest may be accomplished using northern-blotting or RT-PCR techniques. Once plants have been regenerated, and progeny plants homozygous for the transgene have been obtained, plants will have a stable phenotype that will be observed in similar seeds in later generations.

In another aspect, this invention includes a polynucleotide of this invention or a functionally equivalent subfragment thereof useful in antisense inhibition or cosuppression of expression of nucleic acid sequences encoding proteins having plastidic phosphoglucomutase activity, most preferably in antisense inhibition or cosuppression of an endogenous plastidic phosphoglucomutase gene.

Protocols for antisense inhibition or co-suppression are well known to those skilled in the art.

Cosuppression constructs in plants have been previously designed by focusing on overexpression of a nucleic acid sequence having homology to a native mRNA, in the sense orientation, which results in the reduction of all RNA having homology to the overexpressed sequence (see Vaucheret et al. (1998) Plant J. 16:651-659; and Gura (2000) Nature 404:804-808). Another variation describes the use of plant viral sequences to direct the suppression of proximal mRNA encoding sequences (PCT Publication WO 98/36083 published on Aug. 20, 1998). Recent work has described the use of “hairpin” structures that incorporate all, or part, of an mRNA encoding sequence in a complementary orientation that results in a potential “stem-loop” structure for the expressed RNA (PCT Publication WO 99/53050 published on Oct. 21, 1999). In this case the stem is formed by polynucleotides corresponding to the gene of interest inserted in either sense or anti-sense orientation with respect to the promoter and the loop is formed by some polynucleotides of the gene of interest, which do not have a complement in the construct. This increases the frequency of cosuppression or silencing in the recovered transgenic plants. For review of hairpin suppression see Wesley, S. V. et al. (2003) Methods in Molecular Biology, Plant Functional Genomics: Methods and Protocols 236:273-286. A construct where the stem is formed by at least 30 nucleotides from a gene to be suppressed and the loop is formed by a random nucleotide sequence has also effectively been used for suppression (WO 99/61632 published on Dec. 2, 1999). The use of poly-T and poly-A sequences to generate the stem in the stem-loop structure has also been described (WO 02/00894 published Jan. 3, 2002). Yet another variation includes using synthetic repeats to promote formation of a stem in the stem-loop structure. Transgenic organisms prepared with such recombinant DNA fragments have been shown to have reduced levels of the protein encoded by the nucleotide fragment forming the loop as described in PCT Publication WO 02/00904, published 3 Jan. 2002.

The sequences of the polynucleotide fragments used for suppression do not have to be 100% identical to the sequences of the polynucleotide fragment found in the gene to be suppressed. For example, suppression of all the subunits of the soybean seed storage protein R-conglycinin has been accomplished using a polynucleotide derived from a portion of the gene encoding the α subunit (U.S. Pat. No. 6,362,399). β-conglycinin is a heterogeneous glycoprotein composed of varying combinations of three highly negatively charged subunits identified as α, α′ and β. The polynucleotide sequences encoding the α and α′ subunits are 85% identical to each other while the polynucleotide sequences encoding the β subunit are 75 to 80% identical to the α and α′ subunits, respectively. Thus, polynucleotides that are at least 75% identical to a region of the polynucleotide that is target for suppression have been shown to be effective in suppressing the desired target. The polynucleotide may be at least 80% identical, at least 90% identical, at least 95% identical, or about 100% identical to the desired target sequence.

The isolated nucleic acids and proteins and any embodiments of the present invention can be used over a broad range of plant types, particularly dicots such as the species of the genus Glycine.

It is believed that the nucleic acids and proteins and any embodiments of the present invention can be with monocots as well including, but not limited to, Graminiae including Sorghum bicolor and Zea mays.

The isolated nucleic acid and proteins of the present invention can also be used in species from the following dicot genera: Cucurbita, Rosa, Vitis, Juglans, Fragaria, Lotus, Medicago, Onobrychis, Trifolium, Trigonella, Vigna, Citrus, Linum, Geranium, Manihot, Daucus, Arabidopsis, Brassica, Raphanus, Sinapis, Atropa, Capsicum, Datura, Hyoscyamus, Lycopersicon, Nicotiana, Solanum, Petunia, Digitalis, Majorana, Cichorium, Helianthus, Lactuca, Antirrhinum, Pelargonium, Ranunculus, Senecio, Salpiglossis, Cucumis, Browallia, Glycine, Pisum, Phaseolus, and from the following monocot genera: Bromus, Asparagus, Hemerocallis, Panicum, Pennisetum, Lolium, Oryza, Avena, Hordeum, Secale, Triticum, Bambusa, Dendrocalamus, and Melocanna.

EXAMPLES

The present invention is further illustrated in the following Examples, in which parts and percentages are by weight and degrees are Celsius, unless otherwise stated. It should be understood that these Examples, while indicating preferred embodiments of the invention, are given by way of illustration only. From the above discussion and these Examples, one skilled in the art can ascertain the essential characteristics of this invention, and without departing from the spirit and scope thereof, can make various changes and modifications of the invention to adapt it to various usages and conditions. Thus, various modifications of the invention in addition to those shown and described herein will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the foregoing description. Such modifications are also intended to fall within the scope of the appended claims.

Example 1 Composition of cDNA Libraries; Isolation and Sequencing of cDNA Clones

cDNA libraries representing mRNAs from various cattail, corn, rice and soybean tissues were prepared. The characteristics of the libraries are described below.

TABLE 2 cDNA Libraries from Cattail, Corn, Rice and Soybean Library Tissue Clone etr1c Cattail (Typha latifolia) root etr1c.pk005.f8 p0075 Corn, root/leaf material from dark-grown p0075.cslaf22f 7 day old Seedlings p0075.cslaf22rb p0128 Corn, pooled primary and secondary p0128.cpicz81r immature ear rdi1c Rice (Oryza sativa, Nipponbare) developing rdi1c.pk001.a22 inflorescence at mitotic stage rth1c Rice leaf inoculated with Magnaporta grisea rth1c.pk009.k14f sdp3c Soybean developing pods 8-9 mm sdp3c.pk003.e22 ses4d Soybean embryogenic suspension 4 days ses4d.pk0018.d10 after subculture sdp2c Soybean developing pods 6-7 mm sdp2c.pk008.m2 ssm Soybean shoot meristem ssm.pk0072.e7 ssl Soybean seedling 5-10 day ssl.pk0021.h3 sgs4c Soybean seeds 2 days after germination sgs4c.pk005.b10

cDNA libraries may be prepared by any one of many methods available. For example, the cDNAs may be introduced into plasmid vectors by first preparing the cDNA libraries in Uni-ZAP™ XR vectors according to the manufacturer's protocol (Stratagene Cloning Systems, La Jolla, Calif.). The Uni-ZAP™ XR libraries are converted into plasmid libraries according to the protocol provided by Stratagene. Upon conversion, cDNA inserts will be contained in the plasmid vector pBluescript. In addition, the cDNAs may be introduced directly into precut Bluescript II SK(+) vectors (Stratagene) using T4 DNA ligase (New England Biolabs), followed by transfection into DH10B cells according to the manufacturer's protocol (GIBCO BRL Products). Once the cDNA inserts are in plasmid vectors, plasmid DNAs are prepared from randomly picked bacterial colonies containing recombinant pBluescript plasmids, or the insert cDNA sequences are amplified via polymerase chain reaction using primers specific for vector sequences flanking the inserted cDNA sequences. Amplified insert DNAs or plasmid DNAs are sequenced in dye-primer sequencing reactions to generate partial cDNA sequences (expressed sequence tags or “ESTs”; see Adams et al., (1991) Science 252:1651-1656). The resulting ESTs are analyzed using a Perkin Elmer Model 377 fluorescent sequencer.

Example 2 Identification of cDNA Clones

cDNA clones encoding plastidic phosphoglucomutase proteins were identified by conducting BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool; Altschul et al. (1993) J. Mol. Biol. 215:403-410) searches for similarity to sequences contained in the BLAST “nr” database (comprising all non-redundant GenBank CDS translations, sequences derived from the 3-dimensional structure Brookhaven Protein Data Bank, the last major release of the SWISS-PROT protein sequence database, EMBL, and DDBJ databases). The cDNA sequences obtained in Example 1 were analyzed for similarity to all publicly available DNA sequences contained in the “nr” database using the BLASTN algorithm provided by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). The DNA sequences were translated in all reading frames and compared for similarity to all publicly available protein sequences contained in the “nr” database using the BLASTX algorithm (Gish and States (1993) Nat. Genet. 3:266-272) provided by the NCBI. For convenience, the P-value (probability) of observing a match of a cDNA sequence to a sequence contained in the searched databases merely by chance as calculated by BLAST are reported herein as “pLog” values, which represent the negative of the logarithm of the reported P-value. Accordingly, the greater the pLog value, the greater the likelihood that the cDNA sequence and the BLAST “hit” represent homologous proteins.

Example 3 Characterization of cDNA Clones Encoding Plastidic Phosphoglucomutase Proteins

The BLASTX search using the EST sequences from clones listed in Table 3 revealed similarity of the polypeptides encoded by the cDNAs to plastidic phosphoglucomutase from Brassica napus (NCBI General Identifier No. 6272125) and Pisum sativum (NCBI General Identifier No. 6272283 and NCBI General Identifier No. 10190529). Shown in Table 3 are the BLAST results for individual ESTs (“EST”), the sequences of the entire cDNA inserts comprising the indicated cDNA clones (“FIS”), contigs assembled from two or more ESTs (“Contig”), contigs assembled from an FIS and one or more ESTs (“Contig*”), or sequences encoding the entire protein derived from an FIS, a contig, an EST and PCR, or an FIS and PCR (“CGS”):

TABLE 3 BLAST Results for Sequences Encoding Polypeptides Homologous to Brassica napus and Pisum sativum Plastidic Phosphoglucomutase Clone Status BLAST pLog Score etr1c.pk005.f8 (FIS) CGS >254.00 (GI No. 6272125; B. napus) Contig Composed of: CGS >254.00 (GI No. 6272283; P. sativum) p0075.cslaf22f (EST) p0075.cslaf22rb (EST) p0128.cpicz81r (EST) rth1c.pk009.k14f EST 58.00 (GI No. 6272283; P. sativum) (EST) sdp3c.pk003.e22 CGS >254.00 (GI No. 6272283; P. sativum) (EST and PCR Fragments) rdi1c.pk001.a22 (FIS) CGS 180.00 (GI No. 10190529; P. sativum)

The data in Table 4 represents a calculation of the percent identity of the amino acid sequences set forth in SEQ ID NOs:2, 4, 6, 8, and 10, and the Brassica napus and Pisum sativum sequences.

TABLE 4 Percent Identity of Amino Acid Sequences Deduced From the Nucleotide Sequences of cDNA Clones Encoding Polypeptides Homologous to Brassica napus and Pisum sativum Plastidic Phosphoglucomutase SEQ ID NO. Percent Identity to 2 79% (GI No. 6272125; B. napus) 4 77% (GI No. 6272283; P. sativum) 6 80% (GI No. 6272283; P. sativum) 8 90% (GI No. 6272283; P. sativum) 10 76% (GI No. 10190529; P. sativum)

Sequence alignments and percent identity calculations were performed using the Megalign program of the LASERGENE bioinformatics computing suite (DNASTAR Inc., Madison, Wis.). Multiple alignment of the sequences was performed using the Clustal method of alignment (Higgins and Sharp (1989) CABIOS. 5:151-153) with the default parameters (GAP PENALTY=10, GAP LENGTH PENALTY=10). Default parameters for pairwise alignments using the Clustal method were KTUPLE 1, GAP PENALTY=3, WINDOW=5 and DIAGONALS SAVED=5. Sequence alignments, BLAST scores and probabilities indicate that the nucleic acid fragments comprising the instant cDNA clones encode a substantial portion of a plastidic phosphoglucomutase.

Example 4 Expression of Chimeric Genes in Monocot Cells

A chimeric gene comprising a cDNA encoding the instant polypeptides in sense orientation with respect to the maize 27 kD zein promoter that is located 5′ to the cDNA fragment, and the 10 kD zein 3′ end that is located 3′ to the cDNA fragment, can be constructed. The cDNA fragment of this gene may be generated by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) of the cDNA clone using appropriate oligonucleotide primers. Cloning sites (NcoI or SmaI) can be incorporated into the oligonucleotides to provide proper orientation of the DNA fragment when inserted into the digested vector pML103 as described below. Amplification is then performed in a standard PCR. The amplified DNA is then digested with restriction enzymes NcoI and SmaI and fractionated on an agarose gel. The appropriate band can be isolated from the gel and combined with a 4.9 kb NcoI-SmaI fragment of the plasmid pML103. Plasmid pML103 has been deposited under the terms of the Budapest Treaty at ATCC (American Type Culture Collection, 10801 University Blvd., Manassas, Va. 20110-2209), and bears accession number ATCC 97366. The DNA segment from pML103 contains a 1.05 kb SalI-NcoI promoter fragment of the maize 27 kD zein gene and a 0.96 kb SmaI-SalI fragment from the 3′ end of the maize 10 kD zein gene in the vector pGem9Zf(+) (Promega). Vector and insert DNA can be ligated at 15° C. overnight, essentially as described (Maniatis). The ligated DNA may then be used to transform E. coli XL1-Blue (Epicurian Coli XL-1 Blue™; Stratagene). Bacterial transformants can be screened by restriction enzyme digestion of plasmid DNA and limited nucleotide sequence analysis using the dideoxy chain termination method (Sequenase DNA Sequencing Kit; U.S. Biochemical). The resulting plasmid construct would comprise a chimeric gene encoding, in the 5′ to 3′ direction, the maize 27 kD zein promoter, a cDNA fragment encoding the instant polypeptides, and the 10 kD zein 3′ region.

The chimeric gene described above can then be introduced into corn cells by the following procedure. Immature corn embryos can be dissected from developing caryopses derived from crosses of the inbred corn lines H99 and LH132. The embryos are isolated 10 to 11 days after pollination when they are 1.0 to 1.5 mm long. The embryos are then placed with the axis-side facing down and in contact with agarose-solidified N6 medium (Chu et al. (1975) Sci. Sin. Peking 18:659-668). The embryos are kept in the dark at 27° C. Friable embryogenic callus consisting of undifferentiated masses of cells with somatic proembryoids and embryoids borne on suspensor structures proliferates from the scutellum of these immature embryos. The embryogenic callus isolated from the primary explant can be cultured on N6 medium and sub-cultured on this medium every 2 to 3 weeks.

The plasmid, p35S/Ac (obtained from Dr. Peter Eckes, Hoechst Ag, Frankfurt, Germany) may be used in transformation experiments in order to provide for a selectable marker. This plasmid contains the Pat gene (see European Patent Publication 0 242 236) which encodes phosphinothricin acetyl transferase (PAT). The enzyme PAT confers resistance to herbicidal glutamine synthetase inhibitors such as phosphinothricin. The pat gene in p35S/Ac is under the control of the 35S promoter from Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (Odell et al. (1985) Nature 313:810-812) and the 3′ region of the nopaline synthase gene from the T-DNA of the Ti plasmid of Agrobacterium tumefaciens.

The particle bombardment method (Klein et al. (1987) Nature 327:70-73) may be used to transfer genes to the callus culture cells. According to this method, gold particles (1 μm in diameter) are coated with DNA using the following technique. Ten μg of plasmid DNAs are added to 50 μL of a suspension of gold particles (60 mg per mL). Calcium chloride (50 μL of a 2.5 M solution) and spermidine free base (20 μL of a 1.0 M solution) are added to the particles. The suspension is vortexed during the addition of these solutions. After 10 minutes, the tubes are briefly centrifuged (5 sec at 15,000 rpm) and the supernatant removed. The particles are resuspended in 200 μL of absolute ethanol, centrifuged again and the supernatant removed. The ethanol rinse is performed again and the particles resuspended in a final volume of 30 μL of ethanol. An aliquot (5 μL) of the DNA-coated gold particles can be placed in the center of a Kapton™ flying disc (Bio-Rad Labs). The particles are then accelerated into the corn tissue with a Biolistic™ PDS-1000/He (Bio-Rad Instruments, Hercules Calif.), using a helium pressure of 1000 psi, a gap distance of 0.5 cm and a flying distance of 1.0 cm.

For bombardment, the embryogenic tissue is placed on filter paper over agarose-solidified N6 medium. The tissue is arranged as a thin lawn and covered a circular area of about 5 cm in diameter. The petri dish containing the tissue can be placed in the chamber of the PDS-1000/He approximately 8 cm from the stopping screen. The air in the chamber is then evacuated to a vacuum of 28 inches of Hg. The macrocarrier is accelerated with a helium shock wave using a rupture membrane that bursts when the He pressure in the shock tube reaches 1000 psi.

Seven days after bombardment the tissue can be transferred to N6 medium that contains glufosinate (2 mg per liter) and lacks casein or proline. The tissue continues to grow slowly on this medium. After an additional 2 weeks the tissue can be transferred to fresh N6 medium containing glufosinate. After 6 weeks, areas of about 1 cm in diameter of actively growing callus can be identified on some of the plates containing the glufosinate-supplemented medium. These calli may continue to grow when sub-cultured on the selective medium.

Plants can be regenerated from the transgenic callus by first transferring clusters of tissue to N6 medium supplemented with 0.2 mg per liter of 2,4-D. After two weeks the tissue can be transferred to regeneration medium (Fromm et al. (1990) Bio/Technology 8:833-839).

Example 5 Expression of Chimeric Genes in Dicot Cells

A seed-specific construct composed of the promoter and transcription terminator from the gene encoding the subunit of the seed storage protein phaseolin from the bean Phaseolus vulgaris (Doyle et al. (1986) J. Biol. Chem. 261:9228-9238) can be used for expression of the instant polypeptides in transformed soybean. The phaseolin construct includes about 500 nucleotides upstream (5′) from the translation initiation codon and about 1650 nucleotides downstream (3′) from the translation stop codon of phaseolin. Between the 5′ and 3′ regions are the unique restriction endonuclease sites Nco I (which includes the ATG translation initiation codon), Sma I, Kpn I and Xba I. The entire construct is flanked by Hind III sites.

The cDNA fragment of this gene may be generated by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) of the cDNA clone using appropriate oligonucleotide primers. Cloning sites can be incorporated into the oligonucleotides to provide proper orientation of the DNA fragment when inserted into the expression vector. Amplification is then performed as described above, and the isolated fragment is inserted into a pUC18 vector carrying the seed construct.

Soybean embryos may then be transformed with the expression vector comprising sequences encoding the instant polypeptides. To induce somatic embryos, cotyledons, 3-5 mm in length dissected from surface sterilized, immature seeds of the soybean cultivar A2872, can be cultured in the light or dark at 26° C. on an appropriate agar medium for 6-10 weeks. Somatic embryos which produce secondary embryos are then excised and placed into a suitable liquid medium. After repeated selection for clusters of somatic embryos which multiplied as early, globular staged embryos, the suspensions are maintained as described below.

Soybean embryogenic suspension cultures can be maintained in 35 mL of liquid media on a rotary shaker, 150 rpm, at 26° C. with florescent lights on a 16:8 hour day/night schedule. Cultures are subcultured every two weeks by inoculating approximately 35 mg of tissue into 35 mL of liquid medium.

Soybean embryogenic suspension cultures may then be transformed by the method of particle gun bombardment (Klein et al. (1987) Nature (London) 327:70-73, U.S. Pat. No. 4,945,050). A DuPont Biolistic™ PDS1000/HE instrument (helium retrofit) can be used for these transformations.

A selectable marker gene which can be used to facilitate soybean transformation is a chimeric gene composed of the 35S promoter from Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (Odell et al. (1985) Nature 313:810-812), the hygromycin phosphotransferase gene from plasmid pJR225 (from E. coli; Gritz et al.(1983) Gene 25:179-188) and the 3′ region of the nopaline synthase gene from the T-DNA of the Ti plasmid of Agrobacterium tumefaciens. The seed construct comprising the phaseolin 5′ region, the fragment encoding the instant polypeptides and the phaseolin 3′ region can be isolated as a restriction fragment. This fragment can then be inserted into a unique restriction site of the vector carrying the marker gene.

To 50 μL of a 60 mg/mL 1 μm gold particle suspension is added (in order): 5 μL DNA (1 μg/μL), 20 μL spermidine (0.1 M), and 50 μL CaCl₂ (2.5 M). The particle preparation is then agitated for three minutes, spun in a microfuge for 10 seconds and the supernatant removed. The DNA-coated particles are then washed once in 400 μL 70% ethanol and resuspended in 40 μL of anhydrous ethanol. The DNA/particle suspension can be sonicated three times for one second each. Five μL of the DNA-coated gold particles are then loaded on each macro carrier disk.

Approximately 300-400 mg of a two-week-old suspension culture is placed in an empty 60×15 mm petri dish and the residual liquid removed from the tissue with a pipette. For each transformation experiment, approximately 5-10 plates of tissue are normally bombarded. Membrane rupture pressure is set at 1100 psi and the chamber is evacuated to a vacuum of 28 inches of mercury. The tissue is placed approximately 3.5 inches away from the retaining screen and bombarded three times. Following bombardment, the tissue can be divided in half and placed back into liquid and cultured as described above.

Five to seven days post bombardment, the liquid media may be exchanged with fresh media, and eleven to twelve days post bombardment with fresh media containing 50 mg/mL hygromycin. This selective media can be refreshed weekly. Seven to eight weeks post bombardment, green, transformed tissue may be observed growing from untransformed, necrotic embryogenic clusters. Isolated green tissue is removed and inoculated into individual flasks to generate new, clonally propagated, transformed embryogenic suspension cultures. Each new line may be treated as an independent transformation event. These suspensions can then be subcultured and maintained as clusters of immature embryos or regenerated into whole plants by maturation and germination of individual somatic embryos.

Example 6 Expression of Chimeric Genes in Microbial Cells

The cDNAs encoding the instant polypeptides can be inserted into the T7 E. coli expression vector pBT430. This vector is a derivative of pET-3a (Rosenberg et al. (1987) Gene 56:125-135) which employs the bacteriophage T7 RNA polymerase/T7 promoter system. Plasmid pBT430 was constructed by first destroying the EcoR I and Hind III sites in pET-3a at their original positions. An oligonucleotide adaptor containing EcoR I and Hind III sites was inserted at the BamH I site of pET-3a. This created pET-3aM with additional unique cloning sites for insertion of genes into the expression vector. Then, the Nde I site at the position of translation initiation was converted to an Nco I site using oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis. The DNA sequence of pET-3aM in this region, 5′-CATATGG, was converted to 5′-CCCATGG in pBT430.

Plasmid DNA containing a cDNA may be appropriately digested to release a nucleic acid fragment encoding the protein. This fragment may then be purified on a 1% NuSieve GTG™ low melting agarose gel (FMC). Buffer and agarose contain 10 μg/mL ethidium bromide for visualization of the DNA fragment. The fragment can then be purified from the agarose gel by digestion with GELase™ (Epicentre Technologies) according to the manufacturer's instructions, ethanol precipitated, dried and resuspended in 20 μL of water. Appropriate oligonucleotide adapters may be ligated to the fragment using T4 DNA ligase (New England Biolabs, Beverly, Mass.). The fragment containing the ligated adapters can be purified from the excess adapters using low melting agarose as described above. The vector pBT430 is digested, dephosphorylated with alkaline phosphatase (NEB) and deproteinized with phenol/chloroform as described above. The prepared vector pBT430 and fragment can then be ligated at 16° C. for 15 hours followed by transformation into DH5 electrocompetent cells (GIBCO BRL). Transformants can be selected on agar plates containing LB media and 100 μg/mL ampicillin. Transformants containing the gene encoding the instant polypeptides are then screened for the correct orientation with respect to the T7 promoter by restriction enzyme analysis.

For high level expression, a plasmid clone with the cDNA insert in the correct orientation relative to the T7 promoter can be transformed into E. coli strain BL21(DE3) (Studier et al. (1986) J. Mol. Biol. 189:113-130). Cultures are grown in LB medium containing ampicillin (100 mg/L) at 25° C. At an optical density at 600 nm of approximately 1, IPTG (isopropylthio-β-galactoside, the inducer) can be added to a final concentration of 0.4 mM and incubation can be continued for 3 h at 25° C. Cells are then harvested by centrifugation and re-suspended in 50 μL of 50 mM Tris-HCl at pH 8.0 containing 0.1 mM DTT and 0.2 mM phenyl methylsulfonyl fluoride. A small amount of 1 mm glass beads can be added and the mixture sonicated 3 times for about 5 seconds each time with a microprobe sonicator. The mixture is centrifuged and the protein concentration of the supernatant determined. One μg of protein from the soluble fraction of the culture can be separated by SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Gels can be observed for protein bands migrating at the expected molecular weight.

Example 7 Transformation of Somatic Soybean Embryo Cultures

Generic stable soybean transformation protocol:

Soybean embryogenic suspension cultures are maintained in 35 ml liquid media (SB55 or SBP6) on a rotary shaker, 150 rpm, at 28° C. with mixed fluorescent and incandescent lights on a 16:8 h day/night schedule. Cultures are subcultured every four weeks by inoculating approximately 35 mg of tissue into 35 ml of liquid medium.

TABLE 5 Stock Solutions (g/L): MS Sulfate 100X Stock MgSO₄7H₂O 37.0 MnSO₄H₂O 1.69 ZnSO₄7H₂O 0.86 CuSO₄5H₂O 0.0025 MS Halides 100X Stock CaCl₂2H₂O 44.0 KI 0.083 CoCl₂6H₂0 0.00125 KH₂PO₄ 17.0 H₃BO₃ 0.62 Na₂MoO₄2H₂O 0.025 MS FeEDTA 100X Stock Na₂EDTA 3.724 FeSO₄7H₂O 2.784 B5 Vitamin Stock 10 g m-inositol 100 mg nicotinic acid 100 mg pyridoxine HCl 1 g thiamine SB55 (per Liter, pH 5.7) 10 ml each MS stocks 1 ml B5 Vitamin stock 0.8 g NH₄NO₃ 3.033 g KNO₃ 1 ml 2,4-D (10 mg/mL stock) 60 g sucrose 0.667 g asparagine SBP6 same as SB55 except 0.5 ml 2,4-D SB103 (per Liter, pH 5.7) 1X MS Salts 6% maltose 750 mg MgCl₂ 0.2% Gelrite SB71-1 (per Liter, pH 5.7) 1X B5 salts 1 ml B5 vitamin stock 3% sucrose 750 mg MgCl₂ 0.2% Gelrite

Soybean embryogenic suspension cultures are transformed with plasmid DNA by the method of particle gun bombardment (Klein et al (1987) Nature 327:70). A DuPont Biolistic™ PDS1000/HE instrument (helium retrofit) is used for these transformations.

To 50 ml of a 60 mg/ml 1 μm gold particle suspension is added (in order); 5 μl DNA(1 μg/μl), 20 μl spermidine (0.1 M), and 50 μl CaCl₂ (2.5 M). The particle preparation is agitated for 3 min, spun in a microfuge for 10 sec and the supernatant removed. The DNA-coated particles are then washed once in 400 μl 70% ethanol and re suspended in 40 μl of anhydrous ethanol. The DNA/particle suspension is sonicated three times for 1 sec each. Five μl of the DNA-coated gold particles are then loaded on each macro carrier disk. For selection, a plasmid conferring resistance to hygromycin phosphotransferase (HPT) may be co-bombarded with the silencing construct of interest.

Approximately 300-400 mg of a four week old suspension culture is placed in an empty 60×15 mm petri dish and the residual liquid removed from the tissue with a pipette. For each transformation experiment, approximately 5-10 plates of tissue are normally bombarded. Membrane rupture pressure is set at 1000 psi and the chamber is evacuated to a vacuum of 28 inches of mercury. The tissue is placed approximately 3.5 inches away from the retaining screen and bombarded three times. Following bombardment, the tissue is placed back into liquid and cultured as described above.

Eleven days post bombardment, the liquid media is exchanged with fresh SB55 containing 50 mg/ml hygromycin. The selective media is refreshed weekly. Seven weeks post bombardment, green, transformed tissue is observed growing from untransformed, necrotic embryogenic clusters. Isolated green tissue is removed and inoculated into individual flasks to generate new, clonally propagated, transformed embryogenic suspension cultures. Thus each new line is treated as an independent transformation event. These suspensions can then be maintained as suspensions of embryos maintained in an immature developmental stage or regenerated into whole plants by maturation and germination of individual somatic embryos.

Independent lines of transformed embryogenic clusters are removed from liquid culture and placed on a solid agar media (SB103) containing no hormones or antibiotics. Embryos are cultured for four weeks at 26° C. with mixed fluorescent and incandescent lights on a 16:8 h day/night schedule. During this period, individual embryos are removed from the clusters and screened for alterations in gene expression.

It should be noted that any detectable phenotype, resulting from the co-suppression of a target gene, can be screened at this stage. This would include, but not be limited to, alterations in protein content, carbohydrate content, growth rate, viability, or the ability to develop normally into a soybean plant.

Example 8 Plasmid DNAs for “Complementary Region” Co-Suppression

The plasmids used in these experiments were made using standard cloning methods well known to those skilled in the art (Sambrook et al (1989) Molecular Cloning, CSHL Press, New York). A starting plasmid pKS18HH (U.S. Pat. No. 5,846,784 the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference) contains a hygromycin B phosphotransferase (HPT) obtained from E. coli strain W677 under the control of a T7 promoter and the 35S cauliflower mosaic virus promoter. Plasmid pKS18HH thus contains the T7 promoter/HPT/T7 terminator cassette for expression of the HPT enzyme in certain strains of E. coli such as NovaBlue(DE3) [from Novagen], that are lysogenic for lambda DE3 (which carries the T7 RNA Polymerase gene under lacV5 control). Plasmid pKS18HH also contains the 35S/HPT/NOS cassette for constitutive expression of the HPT enzyme in plants, such as soybean. These two expression systems allow selection for growth in the presence of hygromycin to be used as a means of identifying cells that contain the plasmid in both bacterial and plant systems. pKS18HH also contains three unique restriction endonuclease sites suitable for the cloning other chimeric genes into this vector. Plasmid ZBL100 (PCT Application No. WO 00/11176 published on Mar. 2, 2000) is a derivative of pKS18HH with a reduced NOS 3′ terminator. Plasmid pKS67 is a ZBL100 derivative with the insertion of a beta-conglycinin promoter, in front of a NotI cloning site, followed by a phaseolin 3′ terminator (described in PCT Application No. WO 94/11516, published on May 26, 1994).

The 2.5 kb plasmid pKS17 contains pSP72 (obtained from Promega Biosystems) and the T7 promoter/HPT/T7 3′ terminator region, and is the original vector into which the 3.2 kb BamHI-SalI fragment containing the 35S/HPT/NOS cassette was cloned to form pKS18HH. The plasmid pKS102 is a pKS17 derivative that is digested with XhoI and SalI, treated with mung-bean nuclease to generate blunt ends, and ligated to insert the following linker:

GGCGCGCCAAGCTTGGATCCGTCGACGGCGCGCC SEQ ID NO: 18

The plasmid pKS83 has the 2.3 kb BamHI fragment of ML70 containing the Kti3 promoter/NotI/Kti3 3′ terminator region (described in PCT Application No. WO 94/11516, published on May 26, 1994) ligated into the BamHI site of pKS17.

Example 9 Suppression by ELVISLIVES Complementary Region

Constructs have now been made which have “synthetic complementary regions” (SCR). In this example the target sequence is placed between complementary sequences that are not known to be part of any biologically derived gene or genome (i.e. sequences that are “synthetic” or conjured up from the mind of the inventor). The target DNA would therefore be in the sense or antisense orientation and the complementary RNA would be unrelated to any known nucleic acid sequence. It is possible to design a standard “suppression vector” into which pieces of any target gene for suppression could be dropped. The plasmids pKS106, pKS124, and pKS133 (SEQ ID NO:17) exemplify this. One skilled in the art will appreciate that all of the plasmid vectors contain antibiotic selection genes such as, but not limited to, hygromycin phosphotransferase with promoters such as the T7 inducible promoter.

pKS106 uses the beta-conglycinin promoter while the pKS124 and pKS133 plasmids use the Kti promoter, both of these promoters exhibit strong tissue specific expression in the seeds of soybean. pKS106 uses a 3′ termination region from the phaseolin gene, and pKS124 and pKS133 use a Kti 3′ termination region. pKS106 and pKS124 have single copies of the 36 nucleotide EagI-ELVISLIVES sequence surrounding a NotI site (the amino acids given in parentheses are back-translated from the complementary strand): SEQ ID NO:19

EagIE  L V I S L I  V  E S  NotI CGGCCG GAG CTG GTC ATC TCG CTC ATC GTC GAG TCG GCGGCCGC (S) (E) (V) (I) (L) (S) (I) (V) (L) (E) EagI         CGA CTC GAC GAT GAG CGA GAT GAC CAG CTC  CGGCCG pKS133 has 2× copies of ELVISLIVES surrounding the NotI site: SEQ ID NO:20

EagI  E L V  I S L I V E S     EagI  E  L V I S cggccggagctggtcatctcgctcatcgtcgagtcg gcggccg gag ctggtcatctcg L I  V E  S NotI (S)(E (V)(I)(L)(S)(I)(V)(L)(E)      ctcatcgtcgagtcg gcggccgc cgactcgacgatgagcgagat EagI gaccagctc cggccgc (S)(E)(V)(I)(L)(S)(I)(V)(L)(E)EagI  cgactcgacgatgagcgagatgaccagctc     cggccg

The idea is that the single EL linker (SCR) can be duplicated to increase stem lengths in increments of approximately 40 nucleotides. A series of vectors will cover the SCR lengths between 40 bp and the 300 bp. Various target gene lengths are also under evaluation. It is believed that certain combinations of target lengths and complementary region lengths will give optimum suppression of the target, although preliminary results would indicate that the suppression phenomenon works well over a wide range of sizes and sequences. It is also believed that the lengths and ratios providing optimum suppression may vary somewhat given different target sequences and/or complementary regions.

The plasmid pKS106 is made by putting the EagI fragment of ELVISLIVES (SEQ ID NO:19) into the NotI site of pKS67. The ELVISLIVES fragment is made by PCR using two primers and no other DNA:

SEQ ID NO: 21 5′-GAATTCCGGCCGGAGCTGGTCATCTCGCTCATCGTCGAGTC GGCGGCCGCCGACTCGACGATGAGCGAGATGACCAGCTCCGGCC GGAATTC-3′ SEQ ID NO: 22 5′-GAATTCCGGCCGGAG-3′

The product of the PCR reaction is digested with EagI (5′-CGGCCG-3′) and then ligated into NotI digested pKS67. The term “ELVISLIVES” and “EL” are used interchangeably herein.

Additional plasmids can be used to test this example. For example, pKS121 contains the Kti3 promoter/NotI/Kti3 3′ terminator fragment analogous to pKS83 inserted into the BamHI-SalI digested pKS102. The EagI digested ELVISLIVES cloning site made from SEQ ID NOs:14 and 15 is inserted into the NotI site of pKS121 to form pKS124. The EagI digested EL PCR product can be ligated into NotI digested pKS124 to form the 2XEL plasmid, pKS133 (SEQ ID NO:17), containing two copies of ELVISLIVES. An additional 2XEL vector, pKS151, is similar to pKS133 except for the addition of a second hygromycin phosphotransferase gene with a 35S-CaMV promoter. Any synthetic sequence, or naturally occurring sequence, can be used in an analogous manner. The addition of a 574 base pair NotI fragment (SEQ ID NO:14) into a NotI-digested pKS133 produces pTC103. The 574 base pair Not I fragment (SEQ ID NO:14) contains a 541 base pair region (SEQ ID NO:15) of the soybean plastid phosphoglucomutase coding region (SEQ ID NO:8).

Example 10 Down Regulation of Plastidic Phosphoglucomutase in Soybean

Soybean was transformed with the plasmid DNA, pTC103, and transgenic lines were selected. Transgenic lines were screened for down regulation of plastidic phosphoglucomutase in soybean. The screening assay involved iodine staining for the presence or absence of starch in immature seeds (mid-pod stage). The method involved harvesting half of the seed, and putting that seed on dry ice and storing at −80 C. The other half of the seed was placed in 100% ethanol overnight, and subsequently stained with water:lugol (4:1) solution for 10 to 30 minutes at room temperature. Lugol is an iodine/potassium iodide solution, commercially available from Sigma.

Four out of nineteen events showed a clear reduction in iodine staining indicating a reduction in starch content. This may reflect a 21% cosuppression success with the hairpin construct. Three additional events showed potential reduction in iodine staining, although the differences in staining were subtle. The segregation patterns of events 100-2-1 and 108-3-1 are consistent with a theoretical segregation of a dominant co-suppression (1:3).

TABLE 6 Summary of Iodine Screen Sum +Events 4 −Events 12 ?Events 3 Total Events Analyzed 19 Events with no 2 plants/sterile/dwarf Total Events 27

TABLE 7 Seed segregation information of potential positive pPGM events. Event Plant D:L seed ratio Note 100-2-1 1 1:5 clear positive 100-2-1 2 3:2 clear positive 100-2-1 3 1:5 clear positive 108-3-1 1 0:6 clear positive 108-3-1 2 2:4 clear positive 108-3-1 3 1:5 clear positive 105-2-3 1 4:0 negative 105-2-3 2 1:5 clear positive 105-1-6 1 4:0 negative 105-1-6 3 2:2 clear positive 105-1-1 1 4:2 D/L 105-1-1 2 0:6 D/L 105-1-1 3 6:0 D/L 101-2-6 1 6:0 D/L 101-2-6 3 2:3 D/L 102-3-3 1 2:3 D/L 102-3-3 2 3:0 D/L D = dark blue stain, L = light blue or no stain, D/L in between dark and light stain

Example 11 Silencing of Plastidic Phosphoglucomutase (pPGM) Results in a Stable Reduction Of Transient Starch Accumulation in Developing Soybean Seeds

Transgenic soybean events were produced as described in Example 10.

Developing soybean seeds were harvested at approximately mid-maturity (20 to 30 days after flowering (DAF)) and starch content was quantified as described in Brown and Huber, Physiologia Plantarum 72:518-524 (1988). T1 seeds from three transgenic events showed about an 80% reduction in starch content as compared to wild-type seeds (Table 8). The starch data correlated with the iodine staining described in Example 10, i.e., seeds that do not stain blue have a significant reduction in starch content while blue-staining seeds have starch contents similar to wild-type

TABLE 8 Starch Content of T1 Seeds (Approximately Mid-maturity) Segregating for Co-suppression of pPGM. Iodine Mg starch/g seed % of Event score mean st. dev. wild-type WT (Jack) B 22.83 5.69 100 108-3-1 W 5.20 2.24 20 108-3-1 B 25.92 — 100 105-1-8 nd nd nd nd 100-2-1 W 5.27 1.66 22 100-2-1 B 24.27 5.40 100 105-1-6 W 2.69 3.81 14 105-1-6 B 18.87 6.76 100 B = Seeds Staining Blue. W = Seeds Not Staining. Blue Staining Indicates Presence of Starch. nd = not determined

The soluble carbohydrate composition of developing transgenic seeds was measured by high performance anion exchange chromatography/pulsed amperometric detection (HPAE/PAD). Individual seeds from transgenic lines were harvested at mid-maturity (20 to 30 DAF) for detection of carbohydrate composition. The seeds were frozen in liquid nitrogen, ground with a mortar and pestle, and transferred to 15 ml microcentrifuge tubes. Ethanol (80%) was added to the tubes and the samples were heated to 70° C. for 15 minutes. Samples were centrifuged at 4000 rpm for 15 minutes at 4° C. and the supernatant collected. The pellet was re-extracted two additional times with 80% ethanol at 70° C. The supernatants were combined, dried down in a speedvac, and the pellet re-suspended in water. Furthermore, the extracts were filtered through a 0.2 μm Nylon-66 filter (Rainin, Emeryville, Calif.) and analyzed by HPAE/PAD using a DX500 anion exchange analyzer (Dionex, Sunnyvale, Calif.) equipped with a 250×4 mm CarboPac PA1 anion exchange column and a 25×4 mm CarboPac PA guard column. Soluble carbohydrates were separated with a 30 minute isocratic run of 0.5 mM NaAc in 150 mM NaOH at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. A dilution series of glucose, fructose, sucrose, raffinose, stachyose and verbascose were used as external standards.

Soluble carbohydrate analysis on 6 seeds per event segregating for iodine staining (starch presence) indicated no major change in concentration of sucrose and total soluble carbohydrates at approximately mid-maturity (Table 9). No raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFOs) were observed at this stage of development; hence, no sucrose to RFO ratio could be determined.

TABLE 9 Sucrose and Total Soluble Sugar Content (mg/g seed) of Segregating T1 Seeds Harvested at Mid-maturity. Plant Seed Sucrose Total Soluble Sugars Event No. Score mean std. mean std. 108-3-1 1 L 22.8 3.1 26.5 3.8 108-3-1 3 D 13.1 — 17.2 — 108-3-1 3 L 10.4 5.9 14.7 5.4 105-1-8 nd* nd nd nd nd 100-2-1 2 D 16.0 4.7 21.0 6.0 100-2-1 2 L 18.6 4.7 24.3 5.6 105-1-6 1 D 31.5 12.5 36.4 3.8 105-1-6 3 D 23.1 2.6 27.3 2.6 105-1-6 3 L 18.2 5.2 23.4 5.4 nd* = not determined D = Dark Blue Stain, L = Light Blue or No Stain

T1 seeds from event 108-3-1 were planted in a growth chamber and T2 seeds were harvested at mid-maturity and screened for starch presence using the iodine screen described in Example 10. Starch and soluble carbohydrate content of T2 seeds were determined as described above.

T2 seeds in which the pPGM gene is silenced (referred to as PGM-KO) showed an 80% decrease in starch content (Table 10). Null-segregating T2 seeds were also identified which had wild-type starch levels (referred to as PGM-WT). No major differences in soluble carbohydrate concentrations between pPGM-silenced T2 seeds (PGM-KO) and wild-type seeds (Jack or PGM-WT) were observed at this stage of development. This data is similar to data obtained from T1 seeds (Table 8 and Table 9) and suggest that the event is inherited in a stable manner.

TABLE 10 Starch, Sucrose and Total Soluble Carbohydrate Content of T2 Seeds (Growth Chamber Grown) from pPGM-Silenced Seeds Harvested at Mid-maturity. mg mg mg Total Starch/g Iodine Sucrose/ CHOs/g Seed % of Name Event Score g Seed Seed (mean) WT Jack Control B 15.9 19.8 22.83 100 PGM-KO 108-3-1 W 14.8 21.3 3.7 22 PGM-WT 108-3-1 B 16.6 19.7 16.89 100 B = Seeds Staining Blue. W = Seeds Not Staining. Blue Staining Indicates Presence of Starch.

Starch quantitation of developing soybean seeds harvested at 20, 30, 40 and 50 DAF indicated that throughout seed development, the starch accumulation of a pPGM-silenced soybean was reduced by 85% as compared to its null segregant (FIG. 2).

Example 12 Silencing of Plastidic Phosphoglucomutase Decreases Total Carbohydrate Content and Alters the Sucrose to Raffinose Family Oliqosaccharide Ratio in Mature Seeds

Transgenic T2 soybean seeds were harvested at mid-maturity and screened for reduced starch content using the iodine screen described in Example 10. In total, three thousand seeds (field and growth chamber grown) from 436 plants representing 21 different events were screened. A secondary screen using 20 seeds per plant was conducted to identify potential homozygotes. Five events (108-3-1, 105-1-8, 100-2-1, 105-1-7 and 100-3-2) showed a decreased or no iodine staining.

Carbohydrate analysis (determined as described in Example 11) of mature T2 seeds from plants grown in a growth chamber (GC) revealed a decrease in total soluble carbohydrates of approximately 11% with sucrose being the major sugar affected (38% decrease) as compared to their null segregant (FIG. 3). Carbohydrate analysis of field grown events revealed a decrease in total soluble carbohydrates of approximately 14 to 25% together with a 30 to 39% decrease in sucrose. In both the growth chamber and field grown plants, mature seeds from the pPGM-silenced events (PGM-KO) were characterized with a distinctive change in sucrose to RFO ratio. Under these conditions the sucrose to RFO ratio of wild-type seeds averaged around 1.3 to 1.7 while the sucrose to RFO ratio of pPGM co-suppressed seeds averaged around 0.7 to 0.9.

Seeds from a selected number of events were grown in a growth chamber to produce T3 seeds. Carbohydrate analysis of T3 seeds from pPGM-silenced events revealed a decrease in total soluble carbohydrates of approximately 24 to 35% as compared to their wild-type. Sucrose content decreased by 35 to 48% whereas RFO decreased by approximately 14% (FIG. 4).

The carbohydrate profile of these T3 seeds is thus very similar to R2 seeds and indicates (as was seen with the starch content) that the pPGM trait is inherited in a stable manner. The sucrose to RFO ratio of pPGM co-suppressed R3 seeds (ratio of 1.2 to 1.5) was as compared to the null segregant (ratio of 1.6 to 2.0). Although the sucrose to RFO ratio in T3 seeds is somewhat higher as compared to T2 seeds, the decrease in the sucrose to RFO ratio between pPGM co-suppressed seeds and wild-type seeds averages around 0.5.

Example 13 Silencing of Plastidic Phosphoglucomutase (pPGM) Results in an Increased Accumulation of Oil and/or Protein in Mature Seeds

Total oil and protein content of mature T2 seeds from event 108-3-1-1 showing a pPGM-silenced phenotype was determined and compared to the oil and protein content of a pPGM null segregant (wild-type phenotype) from the same event (Table 11). Percent oil and percent protein changes were expressed on a seed dry weight basis. Seed composition of wild-type 92B91 was performed as a control reference. Protein and oil were measured by Woodson-Tenant Labs (Des Moines, Iowa), using standard AOAC methods; combustion method for protein (AOAC Official Method 990.03; 2000 AOAC International), and ether extraction method for oil (AOAC Official Method 920.39; 2000 AOAC International).

Field grown pPGM-silenced seeds showed an increased oil content of up to 2% on a seed dry wt basis and a slightly increased protein content (1% on a seed dry wt basis) as compared to seeds from the null segregant. Total oil content of growth chamber grown pPGM co-suppressed seeds increased by 4% on a seed dry wt basis. This high increase in oil content was accompanied with a decreased protein content (Table 11). No major difference was observed between the seed composition of PGM-WT and the wild-type cultivar 92B91.

TABLE 11 Seed Composition of T2 seeds from a pPGM-Silenced Line (PGM-KO) and a Null Segregant (PGM-WT) for Event 108-3-1-1 % Growth % % Oil & Con- Pheno- Pro- % Oil Protein Protein ID dition type % Oil tein Increase Increase Increase 2097-7 Growth PGM-KO 23.39 37.08 4.19 −3.04 1.15 Cham- ber 2097-7 Field PGM-KO 21.22 41.25 2.20 +1.12 3.32 2097-1 Field PGM-WT 19.20 40.12 — — — 92B91 Field wild-type 20.36 40.40 — — —

T2 seeds from event 108-3-1-1 were planted in a growth chamber to produce T3 seeds. This T3 generation of mature seeds from pPGM co-suppressed seeds showed the greatest increase in protein content rather than oil content when compared to their null segregant (Table 12; percent oil and percent protein changes were calculated on a seed dry weight basis). Interestingly, the sum of both increase in oil and protein content was similar for T3 seeds from both plants, ranging from 1.76 to 1.83%, on a seed dry wt basis.

TABLE 12 Seed Composition of T3 Seeds from Two pPGM-Silenced Plants (PGM-KO) and a Null Segregant (PGM-WT) % % % Oil & Pheno- Pro- % Oil Protein Protein Event ID type % Oil tein Increase Increase Increase 108- JS1-261 PGM-KO 22.03 40.09 −0.61 2.37 1.76 3-1-1 108- JS2-265 PGM-KO 22.99 39.21 0.35 1.49 1.83 3-1-1 108- JS3-2642 PGM-WT 22.64 37.72 — — — 3-1-1

T3 seeds from several other events having cv. Jack as their genetic background showed similar trends as observed with the event 108-3-1-1, which has cv. 92B91 as its genetic background. The increase in the sum of oil and protein content ranged from 0.98 to 3.14% as expressed on a seed dry wt basis (Table 13).

TABLE 13 Seed Composition of T3 Seeds from pPGM-Silenced (PGM-KO) and PGM Wild-Type (PGM-WT) Events in a cv. Jack Background % % Oil & Pheno- % Oil Protein Protein Event type % Oil % Protein Increase Increase Increase 101-2-6-3 PGM-WT 22.36 38.48 — — — 105-1-8-2 PGM-KO 21.29 40.53 −1.07 2.05 0.98 100-2-1-1 PGM-KO 23.92 40.06 1.56 1.58 3.14 100-2-1-1 PGM-KO 21.79 40.69 −0.57 2.21 1.64

Homozygous pPGM-silenced (PGM-KO) and pPGM-wild-type (PGM-WT) seeds, originating from crosses between pPGM knockout event and elite germplasm, were grown in the field in 2003 and in 2004. The seed compositions were determined and are shown in Table 14. The percent oil, percent protein and percent combined oil and protein changes are expressed on a dry weight basis. The moisture content of each sample was measured in the 2004 experiment. For the 2003 data, a moisture content of 13% was assumed, to calculate the dry weight values. For the data shown in Table 14, a range of 1.0% to 3.5% was observed for the percent increase in oil and protein.

TABLE 14 Seed Composition of Field Grown Homozygous pPGM-Silenced (PGM-KO) and PGM-Wild-Type (PGM-WT) Seeds. % Elite % Oil & Back- Pheno- % % Oil Protein Protein ground Year type % Oil Protein Increase Increase Increase 92B63 2003 PGM-KO 22.7 40.6 1.3 −0.3   1.0 92B63 2003 PGM-WT 21.4 40.9 — — — 92B63 2004 PGM-KO 19.1 42.2 1.1 0.5 1.6 92B63 2004 PGM-WT 18.0 41.7 — — — 92B91 2003 PGM-KO 25.7 39.4 2.5 1.0 3.5 92B91 2003 PGM-WT 23.2 38.4 — — — 92B91 2004 PGM-KO 21.4 40.2 1.7 0.3 2.0 92B91 2004 PGM-WT 19.7 39.9 — — — 93B87 2003 PGM-KO 23.1 40.2 0.7 1.2 1.9 93B87 2003 PGM-WT 22.4 39.0 — — — 93B87 2004 PGM-KO 21.5 42.4 1.4 0.8 2.2 93B87 2004 PGM-WT 20.1 41.6 — — —

Example 14 Characterization of Defatted Meal from Transgenic Soybean Seeds with Silenced Plastidic Phosphoglucomutase (pPGM)

T2 soybean seeds were ground to a fine powder and oil was extracted using heptane. Approximately 200 mg of soybean seed were weighed and transferred into pre-weighed 10 ml glass screw cap tubes. Two ml of heptane were added and the mixture was vortexed for 15 min at room temperature. The glass tubes were centrifuged at 3500 rpm for 20 minutes and the heptane was carefully decanted into a new, pre-weighed glass tube. The pellet was re-extracted another three times as described above and all supernatants were pooled. The hexane was removed by evaporation using a speedvac. Total oil content was determined gravimetrically.

An aliquot of the defatted meal was used for protein determination. About 60 mg of meal was transferred to a 15 ml polypropylene tube and 10 ml 0.1 N NaOH were added and the mixture was incubated at 60° C. for 1 hr. One ml of the suspension was transferred to a 2 ml eppendorf tube and centrifuged at 14,000 rpm for 3 minutes. The supernatant was diluted several fold and the protein content was determined using a microplate assay based on Sigma Total Protein Protocol (Procedure 541-2, Sigma).

The soluble carbohydrate profile of defatted soybean meal from T2 seeds is shown in FIG. 5. Sucrose to RFO ratios of 0.82 and 0.87 were observed for the pPGM-suppressed event, 108-3-1-1.

The percent oil and percent protein content of defatted meal from T2 Seeds of event 108-3-1-1 was determined on a wet-weight basis and is presented in Table 15. A percent increase in combined oil and protein of 3.02% and 4.82% was observed for defatted meal from a pPGM-suppressed line grown in the growth chamber and in the field, respectively.

The percent oil and percent protein content of defatted meal from T2 Seeds of event 108-3-1-1 was determined on a dry-weight basis and is presented in Table 16. A percent increase in combined oil and protein of 3.20% and 5.17% was observed for defatted meal from a pPGM-suppressed line grown in the growth chamber and in the field, respectively.

TABLE 15 Characterization of Defatted Meal (wet-weight basis) from T2 Seeds of Event 108-3-1-1 from a pPGM Co-suppressed Events (PGM-KO) and a Null Segregant (PGM-WT) % Growth % % Oil & Con- Pheno- Pro- % Oil Protein Protein ID dition type % Oil tein Increase Increase Increase 2097-7 Growth PGM-KO 18.82 37.54 3.40 −0.38 3.02 Cham- ber 2097-7 Field PGM-KO 17.65 40.51 2.23 2.59 4.82 2097-1 Field PGM-WT 15.42 37.92 — — — 92B91 Field wild-type 16.92 36.80 — — —

TABLE 16 Characterization of Defatted Meal (dry-weight basis) from T2 seeds of Event 108-1-1 from a pPGM Co-suppressed Event (PGM-KO) and a Null Segregant (PGM-WT) % Growth % % Oil & Con- Pheno- Pro- % Oil Protein Protein ID dition type % Oil tein Increase Increase Increase 2097-7 Growth PGM-KO 18.82 40.31 3.40 −0.20 3.20 Cham- ber 2097-7 Field PGM-KO 17.65 43.45 2.23 2.94 5.17 2097-1 Field PGM-WT 15.42 40.51 — — — 92B91 Field wild-type 16.92 39.35 — — —

Example 15 Characterization of cDNA Clones Encoding the Large Subunit and the Small Subunit Polypeptides of Soybean ADP-Glucose Pyrophosphorylase

A BLAST analysis of soybean sequences identified cDNA clones that encoded proteins with high sequence similarity to the large subunit of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase from chickpea, Cicer arietinum (NCBI General Identifier No. 13487785), and to the small subunit, PvAGPS1, of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase from Phaseolus vulgaris (NCBI General Identifier No. 29421116). SEQ ID NO:24, encoded by SEQ ID NO:23, corresponds to the amino acid sequence of a large subunit polypeptide of soybean ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase and has a pLog score of greater than 254 when compared to the large subunit of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase from chickpea (SEQ ID NO:25; GI No. 13487785). SEQ ID NO:28, encoded by SEQ ID NO:27, corresponds to the amino acid sequence of a first small subunit polypeptide (SS1) of soybean ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase and has a pLog score of greater than 254 when compared to the small subunit polypeptide, PvAGPS1, of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase from Phaseolus vulgaris (SEQ ID NO:31; GI No. 29421116). SEQ ID NO:30, encoded by SEQ ID NO:29, corresponds to the amino acid sequence of a second small subunit polypeptide (SS2) of soybean ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase and has a pLog score of greater than 254 when compared to the small subunit polypeptide, PvAGPS1, of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase from Phaseolus vulgaris (SEQ ID NO:31; GI No. 29421116).

The large subunit amino acid sequences of SEQ ID NOs:24, 25 and 26 were aligned and the percent sequence identities were calculated for each pair of sequences. The soybean large subunit amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:24 is 79.1% identical to the large subunit of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase from chickpea (SEQ ID NO:25; GI No. 13487785), and is 99.6% identical to SEQ ID NO:26 (SEQ ID NO:248406 from U.S. Patent Application US2004031072).

The small subunit amino acid sequences of SEQ ID NOs:28, 30, 31 and 32 were aligned and the percent sequence identities were calculated for each pair of sequences. The soybean small subunit SS1 amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:28 is 94.6% identical to the small subunit polypeptide, PvAGPS1, of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase from Phaseolus vulgaris (SEQ ID NO:31; GI No. 29421116), and is 98.3% identical to SEQ ID NO:32 (SEQ ID NO:251944 from U.S. Patent Application US2004031072). The soybean small subunit SS2 amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:30 is 94.0% identical to the small subunit polypeptide, PvAGPS1, of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase from Phaseolus vulgaris (SEQ ID NO:31; GI No. 29421116), and is 100% identical to SEQ ID NO:32 (SEQ ID NO:251944 from U.S. Patent Application US2004031072). The soybean small subunit SS1 polypeptide (SEQ ID NO:28) and the SS2 polypeptide (SEQ ID NO:30) have 98.3% sequence identity with each other.

Sequence alignments and percent identity calculations were performed using the Megalign program of the LASERGENE bioinformatics computing suite (DNASTAR Inc., Madison, Wis.). Multiple alignment of the sequences was performed using the Clustal V method of alignment (Higgins and Sharp (1989) CABIOS. 5:151-153) with the default parameters (GAP PENALTY=10, GAP LENGTH PENALTY=10). Default parameters for pairwise alignments using the Clustal method were KTUPLE=1, GAP PENALTY=3, WINDOW=5 and DIAGONALS SAVED=5.

Sequence alignments and BLAST scores and probabilities indicate that the nucleic acid fragments comprising the instant cDNA clones encode full-length polypeptides for the large and small subunits of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase from soybean. 

1. An isolated polynucleotide comprising: (a) a first nucleotide sequence encoding a first polypeptide having phosphoglucomutase activity, wherein the amino acid sequence of the first polypeptide and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:8 have at least 95% identity based on the Clustal alignment method, (b) a second nucleotide sequence encoding a second polypeptide having phosphoglucomutase activity, wherein the amino acid sequence of the second polypeptide and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2 or SEQ ID NO:4 have at least 85% identity based on the Clustal alignment method, or (c) the complement of the first or second nucleotide sequence.
 2. The isolated polynucleotide of claim 1 wherein the amino acid sequence of the second polypeptide and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2 or SEQ ID NO:4 have at least 90% identity based on the Clustal alignment method.
 3. The isolated polynucleotide of claim 1, wherein the amino acid sequence of the second polypeptide and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2 or SEQ ID NO:4 have at least 95% identity based on the Clustal alignment method.
 4. The isolated polynucleotide of claim 1, wherein the first polypeptide comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:8, wherein the second polypeptide comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2 or SEQ ID NO:4.
 5. The isolated polynucleotide of claim 1, wherein the first nucleotide sequence comprises the nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO:7, wherein the second nucleotide sequence comprises the nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO:1 or SEQ ID NO:3.
 6. A recombinant DNA construct comprising the polynucleotide of claim 1 operably linked to a regulatory sequence.
 7. A method for transforming a cell comprising transforming a cell with the polynucleotide of claim
 1. 8. A cell comprising the recombinant DNA construct of claim
 6. 9. A method for producing a transgenic plant comprising transforming a plant cell with the polynucleotide of claim 1 and regenerating a plant from the transformed plant cell.
 10. A plant comprising the recombinant DNA construct of claim
 6. 11. A seed comprising the recombinant DNA construct of claim
 6. 12. An isolated polypeptide having phosphoglucomutase activity, wherein the polypeptide comprises: (a) a first amino acid sequence, wherein the first amino acid sequence and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:8 have at least 95% identity based on the Clustal alignment method, or (b) a second amino acid sequence, wherein the second amino acid sequence and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2 or SEQ ID NO:4 have at least 85% identity based on the Clustal alignment method.
 13. The polypeptide of claim 12, wherein the second amino acid sequence and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2 or SEQ ID NO:4 have at least 90% identity based on the Clustal alignment method.
 14. The polypeptide of claim 12, wherein the second amino acid sequence and the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2 or SEQ ID NO:4 have at least 95% identity based on the Clustal alignment method.
 15. The polypeptide of claim 12, wherein the first amino acid sequence comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:8, and wherein the second amino acid sequence comprises the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2 or SEQ ID NO:4.
 16. A method of selecting an isolated polynucleotide that decreases the level of expression of a plastidic polypeptide having phosphoglucomutase activity in a plant cell, the method comprising the steps of: (a) constructing the isolated polynucleotide comprising a nucleotide sequence of at least 30 contiguous nucleotides derived from the isolated polynucleotide of claim 1; (b) introducing the isolated polynucleotide into the plant cell; (c) measuring the level of the polypeptide in the plant cell containing the polynucleotide; and (d) comparing the level of the polypeptide in the plant cell containing the isolated polynucleotide with the level of the polypeptide in a plant cell that does not contain the isolated polynucleotide; and selecting the isolated polynucleotide that decreases the level of expression of the plastidic polypeptide having phosphoglucomutase activity in the plant cell.
 17. The method of claim 16 wherein the isolated polynucleotide comprises a nucleotide sequence selected from the group consisting of SEQ ID NOs:1, 3 and
 7. 18. The method of claim 16 wherein the isolated polynucleotide comprising a nucleotide sequence of at least 30 contiguous nucleotides contains at least 541 nucleotides.
 19. The method of claim 16 wherein the isolated polynucleotide comprises the nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO:15.
 20. A method of selecting an isolated polynucleotide that increases the level of expression of a plastidic polypeptide having phosphoglucomutase activity in a plant cell, the method comprising the steps of: (a) constructing the isolated polynucleotide of claim 1; (b) introducing the isolated polynucleotide into the plant cell; (c) measuring the level of the polypeptide in the plant cell containing the polynucleotide; (d) comparing the level of the polypeptide in the plant cell containing the isolated polynucleotide with the level of the polypeptide in a plant cell that does not contain the polynucleotide; and selecting the isolated polynucleotide that increases the level of expression of the plastidic polypeptide having phosphoglucomutase activity in the plant cell.
 21. A method for positive selection of a transformed cell comprising: (a) transforming a host cell with the recombinant DNA construct of claim 6; and (b) growing the transformed host cell under conditions which allow expression of a polynucleotide in an amount sufficient to complement a null mutant to provide a positive selection means.
 22. The method of claim 21 wherein the host cell is a plant.
 23. The method of claim 21 wherein the plant cell is a monocot.
 24. The method of claim 21 wherein the plant cell is a dicot.
 25. A method of increasing the level of expression of a plastidic polypeptide having phosphoglucomutase activity in a host cell comprising: (a) transforming a host cell with the recombinant DNA construct of claim 6; and (b) growing the transformed host cell from step (a) under conditions that are suitable for expression of the recombinant DNA construct; and (c) selecting a transformed cell wherein expression of the recombinant DNA construct results in production of higher levels of a plastidic polypeptide having phosphoglucomutase activity in the transformed host cell.
 26. A method for suppressing the level of expression of a gene encoding a plastidic polypeptide having phosphoglucomutase activity in a transgenic plant, wherein the method comprises: (a) transforming a plant cell with a fragment of the isolated polynucleotide of claim 1; (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant cell of (a); and (c) selecting a transgenic plant wherein the level of expression of a gene encoding a plastidic polypeptide having phosphoglucomutase activity has been suppressed.
 27. A recombinant DNA construct comprising: (a) all or part of the nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO:7 or SEQ ID NO:15; (b) the complement of (a); wherein (a) or (b) is useful in co-suppression or antisense suppression of endogenous phosphoglucomutase activity in a transgenic plant.
 28. A method for producing transgenic seed, the method comprising: (a) transforming a plant cell with the recombinant DNA construct of claim 27; (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant cell of (a); and (c) selecting a transgenic plant that produces a transgenic seed having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 1.6% and a decrease in the sucrose content of at least 25% as compared to seed obtained from a non-transgenic plant.
 29. The method of claim 28 wherein the increase in the combined oil and protein content is at least 1.8%.
 30. The method of claim 28 wherein the increase in the combined oil and protein content is at least 2.0%.
 31. A method for producing transgenic seed, the method comprising: (a) transforming a plant cell with the recombinant DNA construct of claim 27; (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant cell of (a); and (c) selecting a transgenic plant that produces a transgenic seed having a sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio of 1.0 or less as compared to seed obtained from a non-transgenic plant.
 32. The method of claim 31 wherein the transgenic seed differs from a non-transgenic seed by having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 1.6%.
 33. The method of claim 31 wherein the transgenic seed differs from a non-transgenic seed by having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 1.8%.
 34. The method of claim 31 wherein the transgenic seed differs from a non-transgenic seed by having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 2.0%.
 35. A method for producing defatted meal from transgenic seed, the method comprising: (a) transforming a plant cell with the recombinant DNA construct of claim 27; (b) regenerating a transgenic plant from the transformed plant cell of (a); and (c) selecting a transgenic plant that produces a transgenic seed wherein said seed is processed into defatted meal having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 5% and a decrease in the sucrose content of at least 25% as compared to defatted meal obtained from seed of a non-transgenic plant.
 36. The method of claim 35 wherein the defatted meal of the transgenic seed has a sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio of 1.0 or less as compared to the sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio of defatted meal obtained from a non-transgenic seed.
 37. The method of any one of claims 28-36 wherein the transgenic seed is obtained from a transgenic dicot plant comprising in its genome the recombinant construct.
 38. The method of claim 37 wherein the dicot plant is selected from the group consisting of Arabidopsis, soybean, oilseed Brassica, peanut, sunflower, safflower, cotton, tobacco, tomato, potato, and cocoa.
 39. The method of claim 37 wherein the dicot plant is soybean.
 40. A transgenic seed comprising the recombinant DNA construct of claim 27 in its genome wherein said transgenic seed has an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 1.6% and a decrease in the sucrose content of at least 25% when compared to a non-transgenic seed.
 41. The transgenic seed of claim 40 wherein the increase in the combined oil and protein content is at least 1.8%.
 42. The transgenic seed of claim 40 wherein the increase in the combined oil and protein content is at least 2.0%.
 43. A transgenic seed comprising the recombinant DNA construct of claim 27 in its genome wherein said transgenic seed has a sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio of 1.0 or less when compared to a non-transgenic seed.
 44. The transgenic seed of claim 43 wherein the transgenic seed has an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 1.6% when compared to a non-transgenic seed.
 45. The transgenic seed of claim 43 wherein the transgenic seed has an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 1.8% when compared to a non-transgenic seed.
 46. The transgenic seed of claim 43 wherein the transgenic seed has an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 2.0% when compared to a non-transgenic seed.
 47. Transgenic seed comprising the recombinant construct of claim 27 in its genome wherein said transgenic seed is processed to make defatted meal having an increase in the combined oil and protein content of at least 5% and a decrease in the sucrose content of at least 25% when compared to defatted meal obtained from a non-transgenic seed.
 48. The transgenic seed of claim 47 wherein the defatted meal of the transgenic seed differs from the defatted meal of a non-transgenic seed by having a sucrose to raffinose family oligosaccharide ratio of 1.0 or less.
 49. The transgenic seed of any one of claims 40-48 wherein the seed is a soybean seed. 